Let’s Talk About … Porn, Sex and Educating for the Difference
A conference for educators
Tuesday 20 June, 0900 - 1500, London
The conference 'Let's talk about... Porn, Sex and Educating for the Difference' will take place in London on Tuesday 20 June and aims to gather school heads and educators from across the country.
According to the Children’s Commissioner’s Report published in January 2023, half of children who had seen pornography had seen it by the age of 13. 79% had encountered violent pornography before the age of 18.
‘We are dealing with a crisis’, says Nick Hewlett, Head of St Dunstan’s College. ‘We know that children online access pornography, often at a very young age. The online space has become extremely sexualised and it is there where children spend most of their time today. As educators, we have a duty of care to help young people navigate this reality, to have the difficult and awkward conversations. Schools today need to do more than just pass on the knowledge; they need to support children’s emotional development too.
‘The Conference is about educating the educators. Children do not have the tools to navigate this overwhelming new reality, and the older generations are often simply unfamiliar with the scale of the risk and the impact adult content has on children. It is dangerous to give into the illusion that if educators don’t have these conversations with students, the problem will disappear. These conversations, and sharing of image and videos, will continue to take place between peers with or without adult supervision, and we remain responsible for guiding them through difficulties we as adults never had to face’.
The Conference will take place at Mansion House, 0900 - 1500 on Tuesday 20 June.
Register your place below
Booking Form
Confirmed Speakers
Nick Hewlett
Head of St Dunstan’s College since 2014. Previously Head of the North London Collegiate School in Jeju, Korea, and Head of Geography at Magdalen College School, Oxford. With many years of experience in the education field, Nick took over as Head at St Dunstan’s with a mission to create an ambitious, forward-thinking community that champions individuality through a broad, liberal, and academically exciting education, whilst retaining the school’s historic and valued traditions.
Chanel Contos
Chanel Contos is the founder of Teach Us Consent, a campaign that was responsible for mandating consent education in Australian schools. In 2021, Chanel received the Australian Human Rights Commission's Young People's Medal, and in 2022 her work was recognised in the United Kingdom, when she was granted a Diana Award, and named as one of BBC World's 100 influential and inspiring women worldwide. Chanel has a Masters in Gender, Education and International Development and continues to work closely with the Australian Government to use education to prevent violence.
Cindy Gallop
Cindy Gallop is the founder & CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn, launched at TED 2009 – ‘Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference’ - to address the fact that when we don't talk openly and honestly about sex, porn becomes sex education by default. The response proved she’d uncovered a global social issue, and led her in 2013 to turn MakeLoveNotPorn into the world’s first user-generated, human-curated ‘social sex’ videosharing platform: socializing and destigmatizing sex to make it easier to talk about, to promote consent, communication, good sexual values and behavior, as ‘sex education through real world demonstration’.