Woman's Hour - Live from the Women of the World Festival

Episode Date: March 6, 2020

Jenni Murray presents Woman’s Hour live from the Southbank Centre in London where the Women of the World Festival will be celebrating their 10th anniversary this weekend. Founded by Jude Kelly a decade ago, Jenni will be speaking to her about what inspired her to create an organisation that has involved two million people in 30 locations on six continents. What have been her stand out moments and where does the conversation need to go now?Initially offered for free following an Instagram challenge, #MeAndWhiteSupremacy is set across 28 days, with each day focusing on a different manifestation of white supremacy, including white privilege, cultural appropriation and tokenism. The workbook was downloaded by nearly ninety thousand people around the world in the space of six months, and is now a book. The woman behind the challenge, Layla Saad, joins Jenni to talk about why she’s passionate about helping people answer the question ‘how can I be a better ally to people of colour?’ Journalist and author, Yomi Adegoke joins them.We’ll hear from Eunice Mwende and Dajanaa 'Dexi' Stosic, two young activists working to empower young girls and women in Kenya and Serbia, two winners from 'With and For Girls,' who recognise girl-led and girl-centred groups and organisations around the world through an annual awards process.Jenni is joined by intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien and actor Jemima Rooper. Why is a framework for intimate scenes in film, television and the theatre so important? Is it only to protect actors? And how much impact has the #TimesUp movement had since it started in January 2018?And Pretty Loud is the first Roma girl band. Traditionally, Roma women are homemakers, encouraged to leave school early and marry young. Blending rap and hip hop with their traditional Roma music, Pretty Loud are passionate about putting an end to stereotypes about both Roma people and women through their lyrics. They’ll be performing live from the Southbank Centre.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Jude Kelly Interviewed Guest: Layla F Saad Interviewed Guest: Yomi Adegoke Interviewed Guest: Eunice Mwende Interviewed Guest: Dajanaa 'Dexi' Stosic Interviewed Guest: Jemima Rooper Interviewed Guest: Ita O’Brien Interviewed Guest: Silvia Sinani Interviewed Guest: Zlata Ristic Interviewed Guest: Kristina Mustafic Interviewed Guest: Emina Uka Interviewed Guest: Zivka Ferhatovic Interviewed Guest: Dijana Ferhatovic

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast. Welcome to London's Southbank Centre for a weekend of women of the world. It's the 10th anniversary of the WOW Festival, which began in 2010 and has growed and growed to become an international phenomenon. In today's programme, me and white supremacy, Leila Saad on her efforts to help people answer the question, how can I be a better ally to people of colour?

With and for girls who have an annual award for girls who empower others, we'll speak to two of the winners, one from Kenya and one from Serbia. Support for actors who are required to get intimate on set. What can an intimacy coordinator, Ita O'Brien, do to help? And music from Pretty Loud, the first Roma girl band. Now it was Jude Kelly who founded the WOW Festival 10 years ago. She was then the artistic director of the Southbank Centre, having previously run the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. Since Women of the World began, it has spread worldwide and now involves some two million people in 30 locations on six continents and 20,000 people are expected to attend this weekend. Jude,

how did the idea for WOW emerge? It was simple. I was, by the time I started this, a very senior woman in the arts as a theatre director and as a producer. And that was really almost unthinkable when I was a five-year-old, that a woman could be in that position running the South Bank Centre. And I reflected on the fact that so many other people had had to get me to a place through the vote, through birth control, through education, and I'll never have met them. But then I was also meeting a lot of young women in particular, coming to me 10 years ago and saying, first of all, I am not a feminist, to make that very clear to me, but then telling me the litany of things that were holding them back in their lives, intimate issues around partnerships, ideas about children or not having children, things that they felt they couldn't talk about, barriers to life, etc. And of course, these were women from all backgrounds. And I started to realise that we had lost our sense of understanding systemic inequality. We'd stopped naming it, we'd stopped

watching out for it, and we'd stopped learning about it. And I thought, you know what, we can celebrate so much that women have achieved. It's been amazing what women have achieved. Let's celebrate, let's have a festival. And let's use the stamina and the energy and the optimism of a festival to say, can we still be brave and talk about all the stuff that's got to be solved still? How surprised have you been at its rate of growth? Well, very.

I mean, I was only going to do it once to celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. And immediately people said, actually, I haven't experienced a gathering like this before. I mean, even just looking in this room, where you feel permission to come together with your life experience, but knowing that, you know, I won't know yours,

and I won't know yours, and how do I find out about that? And I think it was the sort of sense of both joy, openness, permission to be vulnerable, permission to learn stuff that made women feel, well, can we have one, can we have one? And the first overtures, one was from Baltimore, the other was from Egypt. And immediately I thought, what is so great about this construct of a festival is that it's not British, it's not white, it's not owned. It's something that everybody knows what a festival is.

You know, it's a worldwide understanding that celebration is inside the human heart and I just thought so many women are put in a situation of being named as plaintiffs and victims and even survivors you know the resilience is not necessarily something that contains joy and I know that we you know we want laughter we want freedom we want happiness and we also want to be able to say well done to how far we've got. It's kept you quite busy over the last 10 years. What moments really stick in your mind as you've spread it across the world? Well, you know, you've got to remember that when I started WOW, Malala hadn't been shot. We didn't even know who she was. We hadn't had the Delhi

rape, although there were plenty of rapes in Delhi, obviously. We hadn't had the Boko Haram girls captured. We hadn't got the Me Too movement. We hadn't got Black Lives Matter. We hadn't started the kind of commitment to climate change. And so there wasn't a sense that there were movements afoot to make change happen. Actually, it was quite a kind of apathetic space, really. And the thing that I first remember was actually people just saying to me, surely, really, feminism is the equivalent to the F word. And I basically said, if you identify as a woman or you know a woman, it's for you. And I made it very clear that we didn't have to identify as activists. At this point, we could just identify as caring. And so what

stuck out over the years really have been the key moments where people like, you know, the woman who came to talk about the Hussidi massacres, the women who've come to the sex explosion in Rotherham and Bradford and so on, Manchester, the women who've been brave enough to talk about domestic violence and break through barriers. And all the things I have unlearned, you know, those who are listening in on me may not know, but I'm a cisgendered white woman, I'm 65, so I have gone through, I suppose, education that's taught me certain things about who I am. And some of that I've had to unlearn, and I've unlearned it from women who speak to me as LGBTQ+,

I've learned it from women who are of colour, I've learned it from women who are disabled, I've learned it from women who are at different places within the financial system. And I'm trying, as I think our audiences all do in WOW, to say you only know your own life experience and those of your immediate circle and that tends to be quite a narrow group usually and how do you push yourself beyond the comfort zone so my joy in wow over the last 10 years is realizing what i haven't known

and the thing finally i would say about you know the wow movement is i always said of the world it's absolutely no point in maintaining this idea that white European westerners knows how to solve stuff and everybody else just needs to catch up. Actually, the key learnings across the world go in circles, in different ways, and the learnings that we are having from women in Turkey, from women in Brazil, from women in Pakistan, all make us able to cope and change things that are happening in our own backyards. Jude Kelly, stay with us. Don't go away because you can take part in the next conversation because a book was published earlier this year with the somewhat controversial title, Me and White Supremacy, How to Recognize Your Privilege, Combat Racism,

and Change the World. It first appeared on Instagram and was downloaded by nearly 90,000 people around the world in only six months. I'm joined by Yomi Adegoke, the Guardian columnist and the author and creator of Me and White Supremacy, Leila Saad. Leila, how would you describe your heritage, your background? Gosh, intersectional is probably what people call me. I am an East African, Middle Eastern, black Muslim woman who was born in Wales, grew up in Wales, in Swindon, in Tanzania, and now I live in Qatar. What prompted you to devise this program? Curiosity. I'd been talking about anti-racism for about a year before me in white supremacy. I'd published an article

that had gone viral and it was called I Need to Talk to Spiritual White Women About White Supremacy. It was addressed just to the women in my community who were life coaches. And it went viral and it initiated me into talking about anti-racism and white supremacy. And I noticed a year after publishing that article that a shift had happened in that people were now more willing to have the conversation. And so one night I'm trying to fall asleep and I just start asking myself, what have they learned about themselves and white supremacy over the last year? And so that's how it began. So you chose what some people would say is a rather controversial title. Why did you decide to use it?

I think it's important to name things directly. I think when we're even, you know, it's like Harry Potter and Voldemort, when we can't even say the name, then how are we going to dismantle it? And the other part is that I wanted people to understand that white supremacy is not this thing that's limited to extremist groups, to, you know, a fringe group of individuals who are just mean and bad and want to harm people, but that it's systemic, it's institutional, it's something that we're all conditioned into and participate in. Yomi, what does white supremacy, white privilege, mean to you?

Essentially, it's something that white people have but often feel very uncomfortable acknowledging. Often when I've sort of spoken about white privilege and white supremacy people sort of point it out to sort of white people that are massively disadvantaged so they'll sort of point out homeless white people or disenfranchised white people, white people with disabilities and sort of say oh well do they have white supremacy and the answer is well yes they are disenfranchised white people, white people with disabilities and sort of say, oh, well, do they have white supremacy? And the answer is, well, yes, they are disenfranchised in several different ways. But their race is not the way in which they're disenfranchised. And I think it's invisible. I think it's something that raises a great discomfort. And I think it's something that is almost more difficult to talk about to people

that are more open minded and more liberal, because as Leila so perfectly put it, they almost feel there's almost that. I guess we kind of see racism as a no dogs, no Irish. You know, it's the N word. It's something that everyone is complicit in and everybody is affected by. How surprised are you that it took off, that Leila's work took off in the way that it did so quickly? I'm not surprised at all. I think it's necessary. I think it's timely. And I think white people and white allies especially are in a space where they are acknowledging that racism is more than, as I said, that sort of aggressive, an aggressive system that's only something perpetrated by obvious villains. I think that allies are understanding that complicity is often as sort of bad

as being a massive sort of aggressor of it. So, yeah, I'm not surprised at all. I think, I mean, her work is brilliant and very important. Has it ever made you feel slightly uncomfortable that people refer to white supremacy in this way? Not recently. I agree, first of all, you know, we need to name stuff. And we also have to stop thinking that being a good person equals not having been groomed and conditioned into the societies that we're in. I talk to lots of very good men and say, like, I understand you're sort of theoretically on my side. However, you know, and you didn't invent patriarchy and I don't blame you. I didn't invent white racism. But if I'm not

aware of it and if I keep defending myself from the idea of how it shows up in my life, then I'm just remaining ignorant and, as you say, becoming complicit. I'm asking men not to do that about women. So why would I, as a white woman, not follow the same example? Leila, how have you responded when people ask specifically, how can I be a better ally to people of colour? So the way that I answer that question oftentimes is to ask them to look within themselves. You know, I often get asked, how can I help? And when I hear that question, I think you don't seem to understand that people of color don own personal life, show up in ways that are often unconsciously, unintentionally racist and change that.

And so, you know, people sometimes think, well, I don't hold political power, I don't hold a platform, I'm not able to create change, but the most important place and the first place you should be looking is within yourself. How easy, though, Yomi, is it to ask people to unpack what may be very uncomfortable truths? I watched Noughts and Crosses on the television last night

and saw a powerful young black woman shout blanka out at the white people and be totally ashamed of the fact that she had used what is the equivalent of the n-word in that and yet she acknowledged oh you know that's the way I was brought up it just kind of sank into me how do we get rid of those uncomfortable truths that we're being asked to get rid of I think the answer is gradually and I again, it speaks to why Leila's work is so important. I think when we use words like, you know, which are very important, white supremacy, patriarchy, they feel very overwhelming. And it feels almost like you're powerless in the face of trying to do anything about it. And I think that's what's so important about the work that

Leila's doing is that it's practical it actually asks people okay you want to help this is how you help that you have to actually understand essentially that something is wrong with the way society is but also with your positionality in it whether you you know whether it's kind of being an active aggressor whether it's just being complicit it's that the first step is that acknowledgement of it and I think whilst it's a very difficult step to take I think the language that is being used in terms of naming the fact that the naming sorry the naming of these issues is yeah sort of taking us very gradually into the right direction. How prepared Leila are people to put in the hard work actually that you require

of them? I try to prepare them in the book. And, you know, I'm so glad that the cover of my book is so warm and inviting because the inside of it is hard and challenging. And so in part one of the book, I talk, you know, I tell the truth and I say, this is hard work. It's challenging. You will feel overwhelmed. You're going to feel intimidated. You're going to feel unrewarded. Feelings of shame, you're going to feel intimidated, you're going to feel unrewarded, feelings of shame, discomfort are going to come up, and I cannot protect you from it, and it's not my job to do so. I think it's, you know, people such as myself, black people, people of colour doing this work, who are called to do this work. We can do our part, but we can't force anyone to do this work. What do you mean by called to do this work? That's a very powerful word.

Well, yeah, because this work is hard for me. It's hard. It requires me to sit in predominantly white spaces all the time and talk about something as a black Muslim woman knowing that in the minds of most of those people are unexamined, unconscious, anti-black and Islamophobic thoughts. And so to put yourself in that position is not an easy thing. You wouldn't do it unless there was something greater than yourself

that was pulling you to do it. I was going to say, having read the book, and we're going to be speaking later about it, it's an incredibly generous offer to basically say, here's some tools, here's some thoughts, will you join? And I think, personally speaking as a white woman, I feel immense gratitude for that generosity of the offer. Because, you know, how do we unlearn and then relearn? We need support. But we can do much more than we think. I mean, one of my most kind of

big realisations, I have a son who's just bought a new car, well, his first car. My friend who's a woman of colour, son also bought his first car. She said, I am going to be worried every night that he's going to be stopped by the police. And I thought, well, I'm not. And, you know, have I done anything about starting to unpack institutional racism within the police around these issues? Not yet, but that's an exact example of things. I never have to have that same level of worry and there's so many examples of that.

What feedback have you had from people who've done it, Leila? They say two things. This is the hardest and most gut-wrenching work I've ever done, and it gave me back my humanity. And that's the payoff. The payoff isn't that you're going to get any other reward. Nobody's going to clap for you and say, well done, you did it. I'm so happy you're on this journey. But you get to show up in ways that match up with what your stated values are. When we talk about feminism and we say we want people of all genders to be treated equally, but your feminism centers white women and you haven't really explored how to show up as an

anti-racist, you're not living in alignment with your values. Work like this helps you to do that. And you feel as you go through the process process a lot of people often feel like they're almost becoming more racist as they go through the process and they're not they're actually just becoming aware of the racism that was actually there but now they're they're able to navigate and walk around in their lives noticing things that they would not have noticed before and what do you most hope will come out of the work that led is doing um i'd say essentially a lot of what seems to already be happening i think it's so important that the onus for once is not placed on minoritized groups to do that work um so often when we talk about racism when we talk about patriarchy we're talking about you know those that are oppressed

in those systems to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to, you know, toughen up, to lean in, essentially. I think that hopefully, through work like Leila's and various others, that we will shift that sort of conversation to allowing people to look within themselves and do that work themselves. Yomi Adegoke, Leila Saad and of course Jude Kelly. Oh go on, she always wants the last word. I just want to say this, I'm just disappearing from this programme because the Duchess of Cornwall, our President of WOW, is going to give a big speech this morning about domestic violence and this is one of those other issues where huge numbers of people, men, are silent on this issue. Women are doing all the work. She's launching

a hashtag, her first hashtag, called hashtag everyone's problem. So that will be launched this morning. Thank you. All right, we'll let you go to look after the Duchess. Thank you very much, all three of you, for joining us this morning. still to come in today's program intimacy on set a company that sets out to support actors in film theater and television who are required to get a little close and music from pretty loud the first

roma girl band now an organization called With and For Girls was set up in 2014 with the intention of supporting and empowering the next generation of female activists around the world. Every year, awards are handed out, and two of this year's winners are Eunice Mwende, who works with girls from 15 to 18 at a resource centre in Kenya, and Diana Dixie-Stozic, who's a peer educator for the Human Rights Committee in Vranje in Serbia. Now, Dania,

what does your organisation do exactly for girls? Well, hi everyone. My organisation is part of the Human Rights Committee, Vranje, but the thing that we have programmed, especially made for girls who are aged from 12 and above, we are working with girls in every elementary school and every high school in our district. And girls who are in high school are actually teaching other girls who are in high school as well or in elementary school about gender-based violence, about types of violence, about how to recognize it and where to report it if you know somebody who is a victim or you are the victim.

And the other problem that we have is that we are working 24-7 on SOS Hotline providing help for women who are victims of domestic violence and we are working 24-7 on SOS Hotline, providing help for women who are victims of domestic violence. And we are completely free. We offer free lawyer support and free medical support. And, yeah, we have tea parties. This is like a little British. So we steal something about you, but sorry. That's all right.

Tea parties are always fine, as long as the rest of the work that you're doing is serious. Yeah, we have tea parties every Thursday That's all right. Tea parties are always fine, as long as the rest of the work that you're doing is serious. Yeah, we have tea parties every Thursday about the subjects that girls are suggesting. So in the end of the tea party, one of the girls picks up the jar, the piece of the jar that they've written, and says, oh, in the next tea party, we're going to talk about reproductive health. And on the next tea party, we call a female doctor to talk with them about reproductive health, or we as peer educators talk with them about it. Eunice, what about the work that you do?

So Resource Centre for Women and Girls is based in a rural place called Machakos in Kenya. At the moment, we do work with girls from all over Kenya. Resource Center has quite a number of programs. The flagship one is called Mentoring and Development Retreats. So this program, we recruit girls from the age of 15 and 18, and they come to the program for a period of three years. The reason it's longer is because we feel like if they come for only one workshop, they don't get enough information and knowledge to equip them in their day-to-day life.

So during the mentorship programs, they are residential. They run between five to 12 days, depending on the funding and the period of the holidays, since most of our girls are still in high school. So they come to the program and they study quite... They are taught, we invite different facilitators who have majored in different fields, you know, peace building, governance, sexuality,

health, rights, human rights, and our main aim is to enable them, to equip them with knowledge and skills so that they have a fighting chance in their day to day activity, life. Diana, how did you get involved in it? Well, it was a little bit

funny story, like I was on a workshop for learning how to make a jewellery and they called me like uh on mistake and then i was called you by mistake yeah and then i that's how i go into pure education but then i heard about everybody being mad at feminist and that feminism and like whenever i hear something feminist in the street everybody's just cursing about it and I was like what the they did it wrong so everybody hates them and then I search it I google it and I was like no but they didn't do anything wrong like I should be that they should

be mad at me come on and that's how I actually got into feminism. And I worked and I went to training, to courses, how to teach other girls, how to know about women's rights, about basic human rights and everything. And then me with some other girls, a few other girls, went to the president of Human Rights Committee and were like, it was actually her idea that a lot of women who who report violence from their husbands actually do it because their daughters made them because their daughters cannot stand with violence anymore not the woman so she was like can you just teach girls how to recognize violence so they can teach their mothers or aunts to report it and we're like yeah and it's like it's supposed

to last only one season but we're like three years old now and now you know you're not doing it wrong yeah okay Eunice how did you get involved in it um so I heard from somebody that there's this group of women who take girls to hotels and in the hotels you know they have buffet, they have different setups of food. So I was like, okay, I also want to go to a hotel because I've never been to one and have, you know, food which I can't serve. That was the initial thought which I thought, you know, I was like, oh, and I'll be sleeping in a bed and I don't need to make it. So that is why I applied for the, yeah, that's why I applied for the program. Very good feminist printing.

But once I joined the organization, I knew, you know, there's way more to learn and I've learned so much. You know, there are so many things I've learned and the knowledge I've gotten is really important and I'm so privileged to have joined the organization. So what benefits do you reckon the girls who work with you really get from you Eunice okay so first of all I'll use my example when I joined the resource center um what the mentoring retreats are is just one of our programs and we have like for instance medical camps which medical camps which are regular. And I remember in 2014 when I went to the first medical program,

one of the camps was for breast cancer. And during that time, we were taught how to do self-examination. And initially, I knew, for instance, if it's breast cancer, you have to be over 50 years and your family has to have like a history of breast cancer. And at that time, I was 23. So I was like, OK, let me just, you know, learn. And actually, surprisingly, two years later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And I noticed a lump during, you know, the checkups I was doing to myself, which I also took quite a number of months before I was diagnosed in hospital, since they were

telling me, you know, you're too young and you don't have any history of cancer in your family. So that is one of the skills I got from Resource Center. And at the moment, I do lead a sexual and reproductive health project, as I want to transfer the knowledge which I've already gotten to other people. And you're well now? Yes. Well, not quite. So I was diagnosed in 2016, did my treatment then. then and after in last year in November on November I had a recurrence again but I am on medication and yeah I'm feeling well and I'm happy to be here the very best of luck to you

thank you with that and to both of you with the work that you're doing That was Eunice Mawende and Diana Dexistosich. And aren't they terrific? So many young people, so exciting. Now, six years ago, before Me Too or Time's Up began to go viral around the world, Eta O'Brien, who'd worked as an actor and across the arts, began to think about the kind of things that were expected of young women and men

when they were selected to work in a theatre, film or television and were expected to act out intimate relationships. How could they be given training in how to do it well and be brave enough maybe to say no to any demands that made them feel uncomfortable. Well I'm joined by Jemima Rupa who's an actor and by Eta who now works as an intimacy coordinator. That sounds a very interesting job. What exactly does an intimacy coordinator do? So an intimacy coordinator invites open communication regarding intimate content, putting in place a structure that allows for agreement and consent of touch and then putting in place clear sculpting of the intimate content so there's

clear choreography so that the shape of the scene is known. And this brings a professional structure to the intimate content, allowing the actor to bring their skill of the acting to the scenes, serving character and serving storytelling, and allows them to really separate out what's their personal body and then making sure that they're really being able to be in their professional body, serving storytelling. Now, I know you were involved in drawing guidelines for Time's Up UK. What exactly do the guidelines say? What's written down?

So in the development of the work that I was doing, so I was researching a device piece of work, and in that I was looking at how I kept my actors safe. I was looking at the flip side of the perpetrator and the victim and so I was focusing on how do I keep my actors safe and started to put in place practices and processes to have a really healthy rehearsal situation and then one of my fellow colleagues Meredith Dufton who's the head of movement at Mountview said I'm having to note all the intimate content. There's no structure.

Please come in and start teaching what you're developing. And then I was also working in conjunction with another colleague and mentor, Vanessa Ewan, and she had already had the inspiration when watching a fight rehearsal that that fight is given time and space to be choreographed. And she's going, that's what we need for the intimate content. So I ended up teaching the work. And then through that, the students were saying, this is great in drama school, what's out there in the world?

And then as I started looking, I actually found some really good guidelines from a lady called Jennifer Ward-Leland, who's the head of New Zealand Equity. And they'd already had a big green room discussion back in 2015 and drawn together guidelines. I found these guidelines and made contact with her. And then from that, drew together the intimacy onset guidelines

and started to share those in the industry. I shared them with the Personal Managers Association in 2017. And it basically sets out, which is what I've said, inviting the open communication and basically dealing with the intimate content in a professional way. Jemima, I suppose a lot of people think, oh, well, you know, an actor, you're lucky to get a path. You're expected to do kissing and maybe some simulated sex.

That's what you're expected to do. How comfortable have you and your colleagues been with that kind of assumption? It's really interesting because I'd only sort of heard about intimacy coordinators about a year ago maybe. And it just seems like the most obvious thing in the world. And I cannot believe it's never existed or been talked about until now because yeah you'll spend days learning a period dance or a fight call and you'll have fight call every day in the theatre before you warm up and you spend all this time and people are sent to gyms to hone their bodies or learn a new skill and yet every time I've ever done

anything vaguely intimate you're sort of thrown into it and you there's kind of been a cavalier attitude about it uh as an actor you're expected to be sort of uh unselfconscious and up for it really and especially on tv sets which have historically always been kind of pretty male heavy um there's a sort of lad culture on there of which I mean I had at the time I I never felt particularly uncomfortable um uh I was sort of willing to go ahead with it and it's only in hindsight that I really look back and realize how uncomfortable I was all the time and that you're sort of, if you feel uncomfortable, you're made to feel like that's on you.

And that's your private thing that you have to deal with. And now I sort of realise that that's not true. But is it, directors are still going to expect, I know you had an example recently of a young man who was expected to kiss and then bare his bottom. Yes. Now, directors are going to say, well, yeah, that's what I want you to do.

I want you to show your naked bottom. How do you help somebody get over their embarrassment about, oh, I don't really want to do that, but then I might not get the part? So this is it. And as you were saying, just because you're an actor doesn't mean that everybody's completely happy and to be naked.

Everybody has a different journey in their lives and some people have a really good relationship with their body and they're happy with that and that's fine. But if you don't, that doesn't mean that you're not a good actor and that you can't actually serve the storytelling. But it is about them putting in place that agreement and consent so that you can talk about... So, for example, with this situation with the young actor, again, it's talking about why is the scene there?

What's the storytelling? Working clearly with the director, always serving the director's vision. And you're inviting those conversations. And very often, again, it's like when an actor knows what the storytelling is about, why that body part is in play, what's it saying in the storytelling? And it's not gratuitous. It's not just for a bit of um you know titillation or whatever that um there's the clear storytelling then the actor can really get behind that because they know what they're communicating through that and then with the work with the as the intimacy coordinator then we're taking that clear communication checking out with the actor what body parts are you happy with most importantly where's your no and that's also a big shift in the industry,

because before now, it's like you feel if ever you say no, you're going to be considered a troublemaker or a diva, and certainly might be in fear if you won't get the job again. Which area is most demanding, would you say, Jemima? Television, theatre or film? That's interesting. I've probably had my worst experience on a film but actually in film there's usually a bit more it's usually time and money I would say what was your worst experience um so it's like a story that I've dined out on for years

and years um I was 22 or 23 and I had a very small part in a Hollywood movie. And he was a very old school Hollywood director. And we had a rehearsal and there was a woman there. But we went up to his hotel room and he lay on the bed. Dangerous. And I had to just dance. I had clothes on and stuff. I had to do this dance in front of him.

And I was like in my head screaming, oh, my God, oh, my God. What's going on god what's going on what's going on and nothing happened that was it and then uh the day on set I had to sort of film a sort of period uh porn film with another actress an American actress who was getting paid way more than I was and um we uh it was sort of fun but he he tugged at my costume knickers at one point and was like we'd agreed that I wasn't wearing a top. So I knew that I was prepared for that. But then he was tugging at my pants going, do these come off?

Luckily, he saw my tattoo and said that would take too long to cover. So the pants stayed on. I then made a mental note to tattoo underwear on my body so that this never happened again. And I had to dance around. And I think to dance around. And I think that we were smoking cigarettes on set. We were drinking miniatures from our minibar.

And at the time, I was having, you know, an OK time and it was just get through it. And afterwards, you just go, oh, my God, as a grown woman. Had you ever had any kind of training in how to deal with these kind of things? No, we did have... i had a sort of uh slightly suspect american agent at the time who went through the nudity clause which was agreed that uh i wouldn't uh put in the script there was a dildo in the mouth i wouldn't do that um it was just bare breasts and the dancing and whatever on set there was no one there apart from the director and

everyone else sort of like having a wild time uh the dildo did go in the mouth um uh there was obviously the the chance that i was going to have to be completely naked at one point and i didn't have anyone and i was playing such a small part i didn't feel like I could say no have things improved yes they have but there's still I I got myself in a situation a few years ago where I had a female director uh who was young who there was an expectation uh from her I guess of being trusted because she was female. And actually, her methods did make me feel uncomfortable and I wish that I had spoken up earlier, but that's why the need for someone like Ita on a set who can mediate between the director and the actor

so that there's, yeah, a sort of mediator. How easily do the directors accept you? Because you're choreographing. So, yeah, so there is concern from directors. And so that's where it's really clear we're serving the director's vision, just like a choreographer, a dance choreographer or a fight director, we're putting in place a frame. So to be really clear, we are not directing,

we're giving a physical structure that then allows the actor to be so to be really clear we are not directing we're giving a physical structure that then allows the actor to be safe yes to know what body parts are in play you know like to you said i don't want to have a dildo near my mouth that would be agreed and consented to we're giving a clear frame that allows the actor then to bring their acting to the intimate skill and then really giving the director then a way better scene than they might have got before when you've got an actor who's partly going I'm not really comfortable with this. Peter O'Brien thank you very much indeed and so to music and a band called Pretty Loud the first Roma girl band Sylvia Sinani has been with the band since it began six years ago. Hi, Silvia. Why was Pretty Loud formed?

We started a group of young women in the educational and artistic workshop of the Grab organization in Serbia. Six years ago, we were younger and we didn't take it so serious but two years ago we start all to write our lyrics and do our choreographies and through our lyrics we talk about our everyday challenges so in our traditional Roma women stay at home and they taught to leave school early and very young and pretty loud is breaking this mold by creating our unique music and performances. I was speaking to your manager earlier and she said what she's proud of is that she's given young Roma women a voice. Is that how you see it?

Yes. You will hear now one of our songs. In this song, we talk about that in our culture, men are seen as the stronger sex and women do not have a say. We don't want our mothers, daughters, and sisters to be abused. God made men and women to love and respect each other. So we will not watch our father beat our mother in silence. So we will fight to stop violence against women. And the style of your music, it's kind of rap, but not quite.

How would you describe it? We mix with our Roma traditional music. It's hip hop and rap and singing. And we are now going to hear it. I'm going to say thank you to everyone who came to join us this morning, the contributors to the programme, the audience who

I know I'm sure are going to go off and listen to lots of other things across the WOW Festival, because you, Pretty Loud, Sylvia, Zlata, Christina, Emina, Zivka and Dijana are now going to sing us out of the programme. Away you go. Thank you.

APPLAUSE Ode vel' tvorin' da kas, moša hem džublja sose Te mangem pete, poštinem pe, kakava život i test nađinem pe Razlika na ne, zorali hem mi godin' Namangavi še te ova muči mi Dostapeli mi ja svi zbog diskna za koja primina a ptaro muša Mateo ve jadno, reće re tuđando Te va zeto vas su promande, hema kođu vliju me I me ka bori nama ravno pravno sartute

Iako a me nekoodike la averčane Mate ove jadno, neće ne tuđando Te vazeto vas su promande, ma kođu vlijume I meka bori nama ravno pravno srtute Iako a mene kodike la averčane Ruđu bilja, glasuna i nema, kje di kim sarmotat Mede jamarel, srakošel, srbištinel BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.