Code of Conduct

We are committed to making Birmingham Design Festival/Birmingham Design events and activity as safe, inclusive and enjoyable as possible for everyone involved. To do this, it’s important that all participants have a shared understanding of appropriate behaviour.

Everyone participating in the Birmingham Design Festival and Birmingham Design community — including, but not limited to the Birmingham Design Festival events and/or communications channels including Slack and WhatsApp groups — is required to agree to the following Code of Conduct. This includes all attendees, speakers, performers, workshop hosts, patrons (sponsors), volunteers, and staff.

Harassment & unwanted behaviour:

BDF/BD is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurotype, physical appearance, body, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment or unwanted behaviour of, or by, participants in any form.

Be respectful of all participants. Understand and respect the boundaries of your fellow attendees, speakers, sponsors, venue staff, and volunteers. For example, if approaching someone that you’ve only known online, ask before initiating physical contact (e.g., “May I give you a hug?), acknowledge, and abide by their response.

BDF/BD define harassment as including…

• Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurotype, physical appearance, body, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, or religion.
• Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
• Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names.
• Unwelcome sexual attention.
• Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they’re not appropriate, especially without warning.
• Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, descriptions in online messaging) without consent or after a request to stop.
• Threats of violence.
• Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm.
• Deliberate intimidation.
• Stalking or following.
• Harassing photography or recording of other people, including logging online activity for harassment purposes.
• Sustained disruption of discussion.
• Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/ assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others. Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease.
• Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect other BDF/BD community members or other vulnerable people from intentional abuse.
• Publication of non-harassing private communication without consent by the involved parties.

BDF/BD prioritises marginalised people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. BDF/BD reserves the right not to act on complaints regarding:

• ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’.
• Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you.” Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial.
• Criticising racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behaviour or assumptions.

Reporting and Enforcement:

If you are being harassed or receiving unwanted behaviour by a member of the BDF/BD community at our events or activity, or notice that someone else is, please let the organisers know immediately – BDF/BD team members can be identified by badges, lanyards, stickers, or shirts and will be trained in how to address and report any incidents that attendees bring to their attention. Where appropriate and necessary, BDF/BD team members will be able to contact venue security or local law enforcement/external services if required, and otherwise assist those experiencing harassment to feel safe for the duration of the event.

You can also email support@birminghamdesign.co.uk to file harassment reports at any time, including after the event has ended.

Consequences:

Participants asked to stop any unwanted behaviour that does not adhere to the Code of Conduct, are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in behaviour that does not follow the Code of Conduct, BDF/ BD may take any action we deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all BDF/BD events and spaces.

Online community channels:

If you experience harassment or unwanted behaviour via a BDF/BD online community space such as Slack or Whastapp, please contact an administrator or moderator as soon as possible either via direct message or by emailing support@birminghamdesign.co.uk

If the person who is harassing you is a member of staff, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident.

All reports will be handled in the strictest confidence. We will respond as promptly as we can.

BDF/BD online community spaces are monitored and if we observe you partaking in abusive or unwanted behaviour or using inappropriate language via these spaces (or if it is reported by another participant) your participation within the group may be terminated.

Important Contact Information:

BDF/BD Team: support@birminghamdesign.co.uk
BDF/BD Directors: dan@birminghamdesign.co.uk & luke@birminghamdesign.co.uk
Emergencies: 999

Thanks for helping us make BDF/BD the amazing community it is! This policy was based largely on resources provided by XOXO, which in turn was based on those by Geek Feminism, and borrows heavily from similar open source policies authored by JSConf AU and Django. This policy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, and is available on GitHub. We encourage other events to adopt (and enforce) similar policies by using and remixing ours.