Students work towards gender and sexuality education innovation

Consent Labs is leading the way when it comes to changing the culture around sexual consent and healthy relationships.

Looking for fresh, research-focused perspectives they recently partnered with University of Sydney students to come up with innovative ways to support LGBTQIA+ diversity and inclusion education. 

Students were tasked with creating innovative and engaging approaches to help prevent sexuality and gender-based violence in high school aged young people. 

Sexuality or gender diverse (LGBTQIA+) young people make up more than 20% of school populations, but currently experience substantially poorer outcomes in school belonging, feelings of social safety and academic performance. 

Research has shown that teachers feel unsupported, ill-equipped and fearful to discuss gender and sexuality at school, or to intervene when sexual or gender-based violence takes place.

The solutions pitched by the student teams targeted a range of stakeholders from teachers to students and parents. Their novel interactive educational design solutions were based on a nuanced exploration of the intersections of gender, sexuality, race and culture.

Consent Labs’ CEO Angelique Wan, NSW Young Woman of the Year 2022, commented that all teams had created well designed and engaging materials and resources for educators and students to help them navigate complex discussions and understandings of gender. 

“The presentations were remarkable in centring student experiencesand voices,” she said. 

Inclusive language, safe spaces, cultural sensitivity and collaborative curriculum were highlighted as key to making positive contributions to everyone’s experience of schooling.

One of the team projects, A Window and a Mirror, designed a website for teachers that collated useful resources for use in the classroom, including a protocol through which students could co-design a classroom charter for inclusivity and tips for embedding gender and sexuality inclusion across a range of subjects.

One group of tech-savvy students presented Consent Labs with a new marketing strategy, urging to them to launch a new ‘era’ of Purple Pride with product tie-ins. 

Consent Labs was able to advise that they are already working on a range of collaborations that will raise the profile of their services across NSW. 

DiversiTeams, an initiative proposed by another group, focussed on creating a self-sustaining model of student leadership in the gender and sexuality awareness space. 

Consent Labs was thoroughly impressed and inspired by the quality of research-driven thinking and innovative ideas presented to them. 

Gillian Wu, Project Manager at Consent Labs, was full of praise for the students who participated in the program.

“Partnering with these students has been a valuable and rewarding experience for Consent Labs," Wu said.

"We were impressed by the level of engagement, quality of recommendations and careful consideration of the issues we presented.”

In July 2023, Consent Labs and University of Sydney researchers Professor Lee Wallace and Dr Victoria Rawlings won a $1.1 million grant from the Department of Communities and Justice to develop programs and resources, including workshops and games, to prevent gendered violence in schools at scale. 

This ICPU program provides a mechanism for Sydney students to contribute to this important work. The program co-ordinators noted that the level of student commitment to the Consent Labs project was outstanding across the cohort.