Introducing
Good Night Out
Launched in London on International Women’s Day March 2014, Good
Night Out is a volunteer-run campaign that works with clubs, bars, pubs and venues, training staff, security and
management on how to deal with and prevent the harassment of women and LGTBQ people on their
premises.
Good Night Out was developed in response to the overwhelming amount of stories we received on our Hollaback London website about harassment on nights out (e.g groping, leering, grabbing, sexually aggressive behaviour, stalking, humiliation, and homophobia) where all too often responses from staff and security fell way short of acceptable.
Participating London venues we have worked with so far include fabric, The Old Blue Last, Birthdays,
Village Underground, University of London Union, Dance Tunnel, Dalston Superstore, The Lexington and more.
Good Night Out has already been featured in The Guardian ("Sexual harassment is normal in clubs, but are things about to change?") Evening Standard ("Time to reclaim the streets from London's leches") and NME ("Groping at gigs must be stamped out") we've spoken about gender-based harassment on LBC Radio, The Community Channel and on the BBC many times.
Each participating venue undergoes a training session from Good Night Out and displays prominently to their patrons a poster pledge that reads:
![]()
Since our launch, people from across the UK, Ireland and beyond have been contacting us saying how badly
their town needs Good Night Out.
We need your help to make this happen and roll the campaign out nationwide.
What we'll do
We plan to roll out Good Night Out as an independent, trusted safety mark for venues, pubs, bars and clubs across the UK and Ireland. It will be coordinated in London by Julia Gray and Bryony Beynon from Hollaback London, with regional organisers around the country.
We’ve developed an efficient volunteer-led framework for delivering the campaign, drawing on a range of individuals, activist groups, universities, and organisations such as regional Rape Crisis centres in the following areas across the UK and Ireland: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Norwich, Medway Towns in Kent, Oxford, Nottingham, Coventry, Brighton, Bristol, Sheffield, Limerick and Galway, with more signing up all the time.
It will launch over Fresher’s Week, September 2014.
We've been working closely with NUS Women’s Officer Susuana Antubam, getting involved with the National Lad Culture Strategy to help create, safer and more accessible student communities.
What We
Need
£5000 represents a proportion of one year’s national operation of the Good Night
Out campaign, based on a volunteer-led distributed leadership model.
Your donation
will enable us to run this national programme effectively by covering all or
part of the cost of:
- Professional design and print work
We have worked
pro-bono with graphic designer Heather Weil to develop our popular strongly branded
campaign materials, and your donation will enable us to extend this identity
into bars and clubs across the country
We have
negotiated a reduced quote from a trusted developer to produce a fully-featured
website that explains our mission and brings together each regional organiser,
allowing them to display their own content about the participating venues in
their town, their contact email and other multimedia content.
We will develop and deliver ‘train the trainer’ modules for our regional
organisers to ensure that training delivered around the country matches the
quality of training we give to our very happy participating venues in London.
- Administration and delivery costs
For the first time ever, we’ll be aiming to cover a small amount of the
many hours of admin time that goes into making our campaigns work.
The
Impact
We have found
that once venues, pubs, bars and clubs were confronted with the scale of the
problem and given the tools to confront it, real change takes effect. We partnered with fabric to develop their landmark harassment policy in 2012 and have since trained many venues (from small bars to thousand+ capacity venues) around London about keeping women and LGTBQ people safer on nights out, encouraging good responses from staff and changing organisational policy to ensure there is zero tolerance. The feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive and welcoming. We have directly held venue management accountable in a open, collaborative process of accountability and improvement and we are very confident we can continue this work
across the country.
Here are some quotes from industry leaders who have benefitted from our training:
“Being part of Good Night Out is soooo important to us as a music space, as
we want everyone to be able to enjoy themselves and feel safe in our venue.
We’ve received some really positive messages from women thanking us for taking
this stance and having their backs since we started publicising the campaign.”
Kirsti Wier, Press Officer, fabric
"Having been in the industry for over 20 years it's refreshing to still be able to learn valuable skills and techniques when dealing with sensitive issues such as those brought to our attention by Good Night Out. Bryony [trainer] and her valuable insight to such an important but sometimes overlooked issue was unanimously applauded by the VU team. We are proud to be a supporter of Good Night Out and their campaign to raise awareness among staff and punters in late night establishments."
Tyvian Vigrass, Operations Manager / DPS, Village Underground
"The ladies loos are a refuge and a sanctuary, and are often the place where you end up taking stock of your night and realise it's not going as well as it could be. Seeing this poster on the back of a cubicle door was a useful reminder that the fault didn't lie with me and that I had every right to tell someone and expect them to understand."
Anonymous feedback, July 2014
Our Challenges
There's always a challenge to taking a campaign from local to national. Context in urban vs. rural areas, bars and pubs that are more difficult to engage with and management that might not want to listen are all challenges that may appear.
Our experience over the years has shown us how to handle difficult questions diplomatically ('Don't women lie about this stuff all the time?' 'What if they're just seeking attention?' 'Gay guys are just more sexually aggressive') whilst speaking out with the real life experiences of women and LGTBQ people to combat myths and drive home why creating a safer environment on nights out is so important. Funding and delivery: We have a mixed funding model and will grow our pot sustainably by charging some larger venues for training. Regional organisers will be trained by GNO HQ (London) on how to approach, sign-up and train their local venues speak to staff, and will be able to charge a fee to cover their time and expenses, plus a small donation to the development of the campaign.
Our values
Good Night Out was developed by Julia Gray and Bryony Beynon from Hollaback London, part of the global movement to end street harassment. We have a strong track record of making real change and have been organising around issues of gender-based harassment since 2010, with zero funding or financial backing. Our work is endorsed by the National End Violence Against Women Coalition. We advise local councils on combating harassment and sit on the Transport For London advisory board for Project Guardian.
We believe in making positive change through changing attitudes, encouraging critical thinking and progressive activity both within and beyond institutions, always working to amplify marginalised voices in everything we do.
Our work is underpinned by the belief that gender-based violence is a continuum, and that if we, as a society, allow even small 'microaggressions' to go unchallenged, then we create an environment where wider-scale injustice can flourish.
Help us out and Get Involved
Every little helps. We haven't focussed on perks because we don't believe that the ability to give more should give a bigger stake in the project, however there are some nice rewards available on the right hand side. If you would like to see your local pub, your favourite gig venue or club sign up to the campaign, please consider giving the price of a pint (or even a round!) towards your next Good Night Out.
Alternatively, why not tweet at them and ask them to sign up?!
We have opted for flexible funding so we will receive all money donated from this page even if we don't reach our target.
If you can't support financially, sharing the link to this campaign would be hugely useful, is free and takes a second.
We are expanding our network of regional organisers all the time, and would love to hear from you if you are interested in bringing GNO to your town.
Follow and Like us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Email us with any questions on hello@goodnightoutcampaign.org
