Announcing our latest partnership, with UK organisation “Safe Model”. Their mission is to help make modelling a safer industry, through providing information and education.
My name is Tony Smith, and I am a photographer. I was reading an article one evening, I think it had been shared by my friend Bekah, about a terrible incident that a young model had found herself a part of.
I had been reading several stories along these lines over previous weeks, and it struck me, that there should be a resource available for models to learn, and be able to educate themselves, in order to try and bring some safety to their work. After all, we are all entitled to feel safe and secure at work, aren’t we?
I approached Bekah, as she was already a tireless campaigner for safety and fairness in the model/photography industry, and through her help on one of my other pages, I had gotten to know her quite well, and we were friends. She seemed to have the same attitude to mistreatment of models as I had.
So, the idea was born. I approached her and asked if she would join me in this fight. To my great relief, and joy, she agreed.
There are many legal implications to “outing” someone as a sex pest, or someone who is untrustworthy in the company of a young model, so we quickly agreed that our aim would be education. We wanted to provide a place where someone can come, and report incidents to us in confidence, and where we can then use that as an educational tool to assist others. We are fully mindful that it’s not always photographers that are inappropriate towards models, it can sometimes flow the other way, or towards MUA’s, or anyone else. We do accept information from any source, along with something to corroborate it.
We want people to feel safe, and to enjoy their work, but just as importantly, to feel that they have some control over a situation. We want them to feel empowered to be able to deal with something correctly, and safely. One of our page fans coined a phrase, and we have since adopted it as it summed up what we were trying to do in 3 simple words:
“Protection through education”
We run the page for free, and everyone who sends anything into us, does so under the promise of total anonymity. We will re-write reports to ensure that no identifying information is included. We encourage open debate, and discussion about incidents, and most recently, we have published a document, with tons of great information about safety. Our mutual friend Mr Dan Archer wrote the article for us, and provided it as a free resource for anyone to download and keep. You can find it on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SafeModel.
We have since picked up endorsements from Spirit Model Agency, The Twisted Agency, Model Safety Net, and now Portfora. Our network is growing, and both Bekah and I are so proud of what we have achieved in just over a year. Imagine what we could do in just a few years more. But, this a message that will take a long time to filter through to the upper echelons of the industry. While most people have no argument against the safety of our models, some of the problems lie so high up, that it will take a much stronger, and bigger message than we can generate right now. Maybe one day…..
Hopefully this will give you some insight into us, and what we do, and why. If you have any questions at any time, then drop us a message through our Facebook page, or the email address in our header logo, and one of us will reply as soon as we can.
Our page is run in association with myself, Tony of Tony Smith Photography and Bekah of TwistedPix.
https://www.facebook.com/SafeModel
http://www.safe-model.co.uk
