Our Streets Now: High Streets 2024

Making change on the high streets with Streetworthy youth-led campaign

In 2021, Our Streets Now hosted the first summer Changemaker Programme, which invited young people aged 13 to 18 to regularly get together over zoom to brainstorm and create their own campaigns tackling public sexual harassment. The next year, an amalgamation of these ideas became Streetworthy, the foundations of which were formed in a design sprint weekend by under-18s.

Streeworthy focuses on the key message ‘support, report, and empower’, and aims to be with you on the streets when passers-by or police officers aren’t. The organisation encourages those experiencing public sexual harassment to scan the QR code on the eye-catching stickers they designed, which leads to the website where you access a ‘report, support, empower’ page. Here you can find ways to report the instance of PSH to your university or local police force, for example, a directory of support services, grounding methods and tips can be found under the ‘support’ tab, as well as how to get involved with the campaign and empower yourself and those around you to incite change, perhaps after experiencing an incidence of PSH.

Streetworthy’s aim is to get their campaign packs (which include posters, stickers, and postcards) into institutions up and down the country- in public places where PSH commonly takes place- such as in schools, bars and gyms. Streetworthy has been recognised as an accomplished youth-led campaign by organisations such as the Women of the World Festival, and hopes to continue to broaden its scope to change society’s compliance with PSH which affects girls and young people disproportionately.

You can download Streetworthy’s posters to print or order their stickers and postcards for free on their website https://www.streetworthy.co.uk/ to spread the message.