Day One will have all delegates together in sessions on online safety with South West Grid for Learning and Healthy Masculinity with Beyond Equality, followed by an evening lecture on online misogyny with award-winning writer and activist Laura Bates.
Day Two will see delegates divide into two groups and alternate between Safeguarding Training with Smart Horizons and a workshop exploring reframing masculinity with researcher, educator and activist Nathaniel Cole, followed by a presentation by Smartphone Free Childhood.
Lunch is also provided across the weekend.
Day One: Saturday 17 January
Welcome with tea and coffee – 9:30am-10am
Online Safety with SWGfL – 10am-1pm
This workshop will equip participants with the knowledge and tools to confidently navigate difficult conversations around the significant digital challenges facing young people today, including ’incel culture’ and online radicalisation, intimate image abuse, and online sexual exploitation via AI. This workshop will help adults understand the online world from the young person’s perspective and their evolving behaviours and provide them with the tools and solutions to enhance their young people’s digital literacy and help them navigate the online world with more confidence and safety.
Healthy Masculinity in the Digital Age with Beyond Equality – 2pm – 5pm
Healthy Masculinity for the Digital Age is a 3-hour CPD-certified training that enables teachers and youth leaders to explore masculine stereotypes and their impact on students led by Beyond Equality. Guided by their experienced facilitators, participants will develop new approaches to working with young men and create action plans to implement them with the young people in their lives.
Networking over Tea and Coffee – 5pm – 6:30pm
The New Age of Sexism: Online Misogyny and Extremism with Laura Bates – 6:30-7:30pm
Activist, speaker and Sunday Times Bestselling author Laura Bates will deliver an impactful lecture about extremist online misogyny. Reflecting on findings from her 2021 book ‘Men Who Hate Women’ and her 2025 book ‘The New Age of Sexism’ Laura will share insights into the ‘manosphere’ and the groups which make up this online subculture, alongside examining the current UK political and media landscape which are acting as barriers to combatting this rising epidemic. The lecture will be followed by a short Q & A.
Day Two: Sunday 18 January
Welcome with tea and coffee – 9:30am-10am
Safeguarding Training with Smart Horizons Child Protection – 10am-1pm or 2pm-5pm
A Full-Day in-person CPD accredited training drawing on comprehensive safeguarding practice in education as well as the specific responsibilities and challenges in arts and theatre, exploring the intersection between safeguarding and creative youth engagement, with practical tools and guidance relevant to both schools and the cultural sector.
Reframing Masculinity for Young People with Nathaniel Cole – 10am-1pm, or 2pm-5pm
What does it mean to ‘be a man’ in the modern day? How can traditional masculinity be limiting, or toxic, especially for young men, and especially in online realms in the context of capitalism? Led by researcher, writer and facilitator Nathaniel Cole, participants will take part in guided conversations that give them the opportunity to reflect and dissect the rigid rules of masculinity. Participants will interrogate where the basis of “how things were” came from and how young people are receiving and understanding these messages, and how they can navigate these conversations with young people to encourage the understanding that there are a multitude of ‘masculinities’ that can embodied, and help young men do better by girls, each other, and themselves.
Networking over tea and coffee – 5pm-6.30pm
The Hidden Impact of Smartphones and Social Media on Children with Smartphone Free Childhood Representative Katie Moore – 6:30pm-8:30pm
An evening presentation for parents, carers, teachers and youth leaders led by Katie Moore exploring the negative impact of smartphones and social media on children and young people’s development, with suggestions on how to counteract them. Speakers and contributions to the presentation will include a broad range of professionals with direct knowledge of the issue from education, technology, paediatrics, mental health and the police (specific speakers to be confirmed closer to the time).
ABOUT OUR PARTNERS
Laura Bates
Laura Bates is a best-selling author, keynote speaker and founder of the Everyday Sexism Project. Her books include Everyday Sexism, Girl Up, Fix the System, Not the Women and The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny.
Laura writes regularly for the New York Times, the Guardian and others, and is a frequent media commentator and consultant for TV productions tackling issues around gender inequality. She works closely with government, schools, businesses, police forces and bodies from the United Nations to the Council of Europe on sexism and inequality. In recognition of Laura’s work surrounding sexism and gender inequality, she was awarded a British Empire Medal in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours List and has been named Woman of the Year by Cosmopolitan, Red Magazine and The Sunday Times Magazine. She is also an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Beyond Equality
Beyond Equality – Having worked with 102,146 young participants, trained nearly 1,500 teachers across the UK, and consulted on the critically acclaimed Netflix show Adolescence, Beyond Equality are one of the country’s leading gender equality organisations.
They help schools, communities and workplaces rethink masculinity and to create a society populated by respectful, positive and equitable relationships. They do this by disrupting expectations and stereotypes and equipping boys and men with new perspectives to kick start the process of community change, personal development and gender equality.
SWGfL – South-West Grid for Learning
SWGfL (South-West Grid for Learning) is a not-for-profit charity ensuring everyone can benefit from technology free from harm.
Forming 1/3 of the UK Safer Internet Centre, their experts advise schools, public bodies, and industry on appropriate actions to take in regard to safeguarding and advancing positive online safety policies. SWGfL has been at the forefront of online safety for the past two decades, delivering engaging presentations and training to a wide variety of audiences nationally and internationally.
Smart Horizons Child Protection
Smart Horizons Child Protection has been providing certifiable, high quality and accessible online and face-to-face training courses for over 15 years across multiple sectors, including education, healthcare, social work, and law enforcement.
Nathaniel Cole
Nathaniel Cole is a writer, researcher and workshop facilitator working across masculinity, mental wellbeing, relationships & sex education, as well as the co-founder of the community swimming group, Swim Dem Crew. His TEDX Talk Why We Need to Change the Way Young Men Think About Consent has had over 60,000 views.
Smartphone Free Childhood
Smartphone Free Childhood is a grassroots parent-led movement who believe childhood is too short to be spent on a smartphone.
They work to bring parents and educational leaders together to start new and positive conversations about the problems of smartphones and social media in childhood, to empower parents to delay giving their children smartphones to at least the end of Year 9 via their regional Parent Pact, and to demonstrate to both government and tech companies that parents and educational leaders are demanding change. Katie Moore is a Mum of 3, and an ambassador for Delay Smartphones as well as a regional leader of Smartphone Free Childhood.
