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Ready for Michaelmas 2023, the SU has worked with our fantastic student Campaign against sexual violence It Happens Here to create this list of recommended providers of consent training. This page will help JCR committees, MCR committees, and College Welfare staff find some informative, interactive, inclusive, and intersectional consent training for your students. 

 

Why run consent training?

"Consent is an ongoing conversation. Quality, age-appropriate and holistic consent training is a primary prevention tool against sexual violence, harassment and gender-based violence. As students enter university, our relationships, friendships and sex evolve, and we want every student to be able to participate in healthy, positive and well-meaning interactions. Providing consent training at Oxford is about building safer environment for students to navigate into the next chapter of our lives. We invite Oxford, its Colleges and students to be part of the broader movement for gender and sex equality - with consent education forming the foundation." 
It Happens Here Committee 2023

 

Guidance for Consent training

  • Consent training should be communicated as mandatory – other meetings shouldn’t be scheduled during the session, and attendance should be monitored. However, students with personal experience of sexual violence may find the session triggering and upsetting, and so ‘no-questions-asked' exemptions should be allowed.  

  • Small group sizes are ideal, so that students have time to discuss and ask questions. 

  • Sessions should be in-person. 

  • Sessions should be delivered as soon as possible when new students arrive (i.e. in the first two weeks of Michaelmas Term) so that students are educated going into events and bops.  

  • Sessions should be for both undergraduate and graduate students.  

  • If you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact It Happens Here on ithappenshere@oxfordsu.ox.ac.uk. They are a group of highly engaged students with personal and professional expertise in this area, and they’re happy to answer questions about best practice.  

 

Recommended providers

OXFORD SEXUAL ASSAULT AND RAPE CRISIS CENTRE

OSARCC are fully booked for Fresher's Week 2023 - but feel free to get in touch if you would like to book a session later in the year. OSARCC offer two consent training packages, both of which help students define what consent is, understand the importance of it, and understand how to take this forward to nurture healthy relationships. Their training is tailored specifically to Oxford students. They offer a one-hour presentation for your whole cohort (for £250), or a more interactive workshop for 20 students. Contact training@osarcc.org.uk for more information.

TERRENCE HIGGINS TRUST

Terrence Higgins Trust is the UK's leading HIV and sexual health charity. They can work a small number of colleges in August and September to develop bespoke consent training for you to deliver in Fresher's Week. Places are limited so if you're interested in this option, please contact safa.sadozai@tht.org.uk as soon as possible.

THE CONSENT COLLECTIVE

The Consent Collective, founded by Dr Nina Burrowes, provides expert support to help with prevention, support, and investigation processes on campus. Their online course 'Holding consent workshops in Higher Education' is a train-the-trainer course to help students and staff feel more confident about holding in-person consent sessions on campus and comes with the option of ongoing supervision for those teams. They also have a fantastic suite of online courses. You can get in touch with the team at hello@consentcollective.com to see how they could support you in your work.

EVERYONE'S INVITED

Everyone’s Invited began as an online movement, ignited by Soma Sara in the summer of 2020. It began as a safe space for survivors to share their stories of sexual assault. After the testimonies exposed the universal prevalence of the problem, the organisation worked to find solutions and tackle rape culture head-on by delivering specialist education in schools. Since offering education in September 2022, they have reached over 60 schools, colleges and universities, working with over 10,000 pupils and 2,000 staff members.

Their mission is to expose and eradicate rape culture with empathy, compassion and understanding through interactive and informative talks and workshops. The EI education programme is designed to empower communities to promote healthy relationships, sexual well-being and to tackle rape culture. Their approach is personal, empathetic, and non-judgmental, presenting the facts and encouraging pupils to think critically about the world around them.

Contact: education@everyonesinvited.uk, visit: https://www.everyonesinvited.uk/ 

Art Of Consent

The Art of Consent is a team of professionals offering the highest standards of consent and boundaries education to university students. They currently work with colleges at both Oxford University and Cambridge University. Their diverse team of professionals specialise in:

 

- Consent workshops for freshers - engaging, trauma-informed, non-patronising, and inclusive of different genders and sexualities

- Top-up workshops for postgrads and 2nd & 3rd years - developing a deeper understanding of consent and boundaries using consent models like the Wheel of Consent.

- Building a culture of consent - encouraging ongoing conversations and practices for developing consent and boundaries skills in all areas of life, not just sex

The Art of Consent supports universities to become safe, welcoming and accessible learning environments for all students, by helping to build a culture of consent for everybody, every day. You can contact them here .

Talk Consent

Talk Consent provides specialist consent education to prevent sexual violence.

We deliver engaging and interactive workshops where students are able to discuss the nuances of consent in a safe and non-judgemental environment. The workshops enable students to understand the issue of sexual violence, whilst giving them the skills to navigate relationships and sexual activity at Oxford University in a safe and healthy way.

We have worked with Wolfson College and Girton College at Cambridge University as well as delivering education to over 150 schools in and around London.

Students at Wolfson College, Cambridge said: “10/10 - Excellent, created a safe space, encourages discussion, speakers extremely friendly and open and was suited to audience level adult discussion.” "It’s the most helpful Consent Workshop on consent I’ve been to so far and covered a lot about the grey area between consent and assault."

Ideal group size for workshops is 30 - 40 students but we can be flexible, and they are 1 hour each. It is £125 per workshop.

If you would like to book or if you have any questions, please contact Dan Allchurch at dan@talkconsent.org

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS AND CONSENT PROGRAMME

Following the success of last year's pilot, the University's Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service (SHVSS) are running student-led consent workshops in a number of additional colleges, with a view to expanding further in future years. The workshops focus on healthy relationships and consent, including sexual consent. They will be working closely with staff and students in participating colleges to provide ongoing support to the fully-trained student facilitators. After these sessions, 85% of students said they were more likely to seek support if they experienced sexual violence or relationship abuse, 84% said they had a better understanding of healthy relationships, and 81% had a better understanding of sexual consent.

The following colleges are participating and have successfully recruiting this year's student facilitators: Lincoln College, Reuben College, St Peter's College.

The following colleges are signed up, and still looking for student facilitators, so if you're college is listed and you'd like to get involved, please sign up here: Green Templeton College, Christ Church College, Exeter College, New College and St Hugh's College.

Please note, some workshops are being delivered to Undergraduates only, Postgraduates only, or both, so please see the form for further detail. If you have any questions at all please get in touch with Amelia at supportservice@admin.ox.ac.uk.

Oxford SU

At the SU, we continue to train Oxford students to run peer-to-peer Consent Workshops in their own Common Rooms. We’ll be running small training sessions *in-person OR online* for these facilitators in the weeks running up to Fresher’s Week 2023. You’ll then be equipped to run a 60-90 minute workshop with your freshers, which includes Oxford-specific, graduate-specific (where applicable), and LGBTQ-specific contexts. After last year's training, all participants rated their confidence in delivering a Consent Workshop as 4/5 or 5/5! Participants particularly liked learning how to deal with 'awkward silences' and difficult questions. You can now up here, or email daisy.oconnor@oxfordsu.ox.ac.uk for more information.

Are you another provider of inclusive, interactive, intersectional and informative consent training? If you’d like to be added to our menu of great providers, get in touch with studentengagement@oxfordsu.ox.ac.uk for more information!