Norn­con wants an inclu­sive and pos­i­tive envi­ron­ment for our com­mu­ni­ty of fans, and Codes of Con­duct (COC) help that. With that in mind, please take a moment to review our Code of Con­duct and Anti-Harass­ment Pol­i­cy.

Codes of Con­duct and Anti-Harass­ment Poli­cies enable, guide, and encour­age safe and secure rela­tion­ships between con­ven­tion Atten­dees. They help to make con­ven­tions a safer space by dis­cour­ag­ing anti-social behav­iour and help­ing every­one to feel com­fort­able.

This Code applies to all Norn­con Atten­dees. Atten­dees include Com­mit­tee, Staff, Vol­un­teers and Mem­bers, and all oth­ers trad­ing, exhibit­ing and oth­er­wise par­tic­i­pat­ing. 

You will find ref­er­ences to our Lis­ten­er Team through­out this Code of Con­duct. The Lis­ten­er Team is a group of peo­ple whose man­date is to receive reports on poten­tial vio­la­tions of the Code of Con­duct. They can esca­late issues appro­pri­ate­ly, dis­cuss them in a total­ly con­fi­den­tial man­ner, and/or act as medi­a­tors, accord­ing to the wish­es of the per­son rais­ing the issue.

Our Pre-con Lis­ten­er team can be con­tact­ed listeners@norncon.org

This Code is a live doc­u­ment and can expand or devel­op as we get clos­er to the con­ven­tion. Iden­ti­fy­ing our Lis­ten­er Team and gen­er­al Vol­un­teers and where to find them dur­ing the con­ven­tion.

Please read and fol­low this Code of Con­duct. Sup­port oth­ers – if you see some­one who looks like they need help, ask if they’re ok or engage a Vol­un­teer.

Ask first! The eas­i­est way to avoid issues is to check before doing some­thing, and it only takes a sec­ond.

Norn­con will be wel­com­ing fans from across Europe, cross-cul­tur­al mis­un­der­stand­ing can eas­i­ly hap­pen, so con­sid­er this in your humour and inter­ac­tions, both online and in-per­son.

Con­sid­er join­ing our Vol­un­teer team by email­ing us at volunteer@norncon.org

Expec­ta­tions and Pol­i­cy

Every­one involved with Norn­con is expect­ed to show respect towards oth­er team mem­bers, as well as venue staff, the gen­er­al pub­lic, and the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties asso­ci­at­ed with the con­ven­tion or event tak­ing place. Belfast Norn­con aspires to be a con­ven­tion that wel­comes peo­ple of all ages; chil­dren will be present at many events and in open spaces, so please con­sid­er this in your con­duct.

We are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a harass­ment-free con­ven­tion expe­ri­ence for all, inclu­sive of race or eth­nic­i­ty; gen­der iden­ti­ty and expres­sion; sex­u­al iden­ti­ty or ori­en­ta­tion; neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty; dis­abil­i­ty; phys­i­cal abil­i­ty, appear­ance, or body size; age; reli­gion; or fiction/fandom pref­er­ences (this list is not exhaus­tive).

We do not tol­er­ate harass­ment in any form. Behav­iour, in per­son or online, that will be con­sid­ered harass­ment includes, but is not lim­it­ed to:

• Intim­i­da­tion, stalk­ing, or fol­low­ing;
• Unwel­come phys­i­cal con­tact;
• Unwel­come sex­u­al atten­tion;
• Com­ments intend­ed to belit­tle, offend, or cause dis­com­fort;
• Mis­gen­der­ing or dead­nam­ing;
• Pho­tograph­ing or video­ing mem­bers with­out their con­sent;
• Treat­ing cosplay/costumes as con­sent for con­tact or inter­ac­tion;
• Body sham­ing;
• Sus­tained dis­rup­tion of talks or oth­er events;
• Sex­u­al­ly graph­ic or oth­er­wise inap­pro­pri­ate images in pub­lic spaces;
• Advo­cat­ing for, or encour­ag­ing, any of the above behav­iour;
• Wear­ing cos­tumes t‑shirts, badges or oth­er items that are offen­sive, or the wear­er has been asked to remove in the past; refus­ing to remove or cov­er items that are point­ed out to the wear­er as offen­sive by the com­mit­tee or a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the com­mit­tee;
• Microag­gres­sions.

Norn­con Code of Con­duct Team will not act on com­plaints regard­ing:

• Reverse dis­crim­i­na­tion”, such as reverse racism and cis­pho­bia, because chal­leng­ing bias­es and priv­i­leges is not a form of dis­crim­i­na­tion;
• Rea­son­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion of bound­aries, such as “leave me alone”, “go away”, or “I’m not dis­cussing this with you;”
• Refusal to explain or debate social jus­tice con­cepts;
• Com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a ‘tone’ you don’t find con­ge­nial;
• Crit­i­cis­ing racist, sex­ist, cis­sex­ist, or oth­er­wise oppres­sive behav­iour or assump­tions.
• In addi­tion, we are bound by the UK’s Equal­i­ty Act 2010. You can find infor­ma­tion in an ‘easy read’ for­mat here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/easy-read-the-equality-act-making-equality-real 

Anti-Racism State­ment

Racism is present across all sec­tions of soci­ety, includ­ing our own fan­nish com­mu­ni­ties. Norn­con is com­mit­ted to being as close to oppres­sion-free as pos­si­ble, and cen­tral to this is our pol­i­cy on racism, includ­ing prej­u­dice, bias, the expres­sion of priv­i­lege, aggres­sions, and microag­gres­sions. This includes con­tri­bu­tions made in dis­cus­sion ses­sions and also things said to and about oth­er Norn­con team mem­bers as well as mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Dur­ing the con­ven­tion process – from ini­tial selec­tion through to the con­ven­tion itself – we want to ensure no one is talked over, ignored, or dis­missed. We are com­mit­ted to mak­ing Norn­con as acces­si­ble as we can to peo­ple from all racial and eth­nic back­grounds.

Inci­dents and Report­ing – Team Mem­bers

Norn­con team mem­bers are bound by the Codes of Con­duct of any events we attend. You should always fol­low the report­ing pro­ce­dures set out in those Codes of Con­duct in the first instance. You may addi­tion­al­ly choose to make a report via the Norn­con process. This will allow us to keep track of issues and spot repeat offend­ers.

Issues aris­ing should always be report­ed via the Norn­con process.

You can report harass­ment or oth­er Code of Con­duct vio­la­tions by email to listeners@norncon.org. Any­one who feels the Code of Con­duct has been vio­lat­ed by a team mem­ber may use this method of report­ing at any time. This email address will be con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tored.

What Hap­pens if You Make a Report?

Our main report­ing method is via email. Once you sub­mit a report, our Lis­ten­er Team will respond to you as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. They may fol­low up with you to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the issue, and what you would like to hap­pen next. We under­stand report­ing can be upset­ting, and we aim to han­dle the process as respect­ful­ly as pos­si­ble and try to sup­port you. The Lis­ten­er team will pro­ceed at their dis­cre­tion, based on the con­tent, con­text and wish­es expressed in your email.

The Lis­ten­er Team is a group of peo­ple whose man­date is to receive reports on poten­tial vio­la­tions of the Code of Con­duct. They can esca­late issues appro­pri­ate­ly, dis­cuss them in a total­ly con­fi­den­tial man­ner, and/or act as medi­a­tors, accord­ing to the wish­es of the per­son rais­ing the issue.

How­ev­er you report an issue, you won’t be asked to con­front any­one, and we will do our best to pro­tect your iden­ti­ty if we take action as a result of your report. Details of your com­plaint will only be dis­closed to the team or Com­mit­tee mem­bers who are deal­ing with it. We will keep you advised of the progress we’re mak­ing in han­dling the issue, and of any action we decide to take. We will take your views into account when decid­ing on that action.

The Norn­con team has the right to take any actions need­ed to keep our con­ven­tion, spaces and events wel­com­ing for all. Mea­sures tak­en may include warn­ing the offend­er, medi­at­ing solu­tions between par­ties, or tak­ing any oth­er action the team con­sid­ers nec­es­sary.

We reserve the right to deny entry to indi­vid­u­als who we believe are unable to reli­ably abide by the expect­ed stan­dards of behav­iour.

Respect for vol­un­teers. 

Gen­er­al queries, con­cerns and ques­tions should be addressed to info@norncon.org 

There is a short­age of vol­un­teers in the Sci­ence Fic­tion con­ven­tion com­mu­ni­ty. We would ask for empa­thy and under­stand­ing in this regard, and con­sid­er how you raise issues; we ask that all issues go to an email that is mon­i­tored, as we do not have band­width for mul­ti­ple social media chan­nels. 

We will have a Face­book, but will be lim­it­ed in our social media avail­abil­i­ty. 

We will block indi­vid­u­als where there are instances where this course of action is nec­es­sary to pro­vide our vol­un­teers with a safe and sup­port­ive work­ing envi­ron­ment, or to ensure vir­tu­al con­ven­tion spaces remain a safe and wel­com­ing space for all. Indi­vid­u­als may be blocked for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

• Break­ing any of the ele­ments of the CoC when engag­ing with the Social Media plat­forms (which are exten­sions of the con­ven­tion space).
• This applies both to direct engage­ments with our social media accounts and to engage­ments with oth­er users in vir­tu­al con­ven­tion spaces.
• Pat­terns of repeat­ed dis­rup­tive or bad faith engage­ments with our social media accounts and/or oth­er users in our vir­tu­al con­ven­tion spaces.
• Repet­i­tive mes­sag­ing engage­ments through social media rather than the appro­pri­ate chan­nels for for­mal com­plaints, requests for infor­ma­tion etc., info@ for all queries. 

We will attempt to com­mu­ni­cate with any indi­vid­ual if they infringe this pol­i­cy and again pri­or to for­mal­ly block­ing them.

Cred­it where it’s due: this Code of Con­duct is loose­ly based on Geek Feminism’s exam­ple anti-harass­ment pol­i­cy, cre­at­ed by vol­un­teers, as adapt­ed for the Dublin 2019 World­con with ele­ments from the Glas­gow 2024 World­con.