On NUMbrella Lane: Glasgow's safe space for sex workers

"Our aims here are rights, not rescue," explains Nathália Urban. "Those are not victims. Those are people who are good at their jobs and they deserve to be respected and they deserve rights to do their jobs safely."

And so, a space like Glasgow’s NUMbrella Lane, of which Urban is the coordinator, is deeply important. NUMbrella Lane offers in-person support to sex workers, providing a space for the community to come together and connect. Not only does the organisation provide free safe sex supplies, a food bank, and a swap meet, it also hosts various workshops and activity sessions. Most importantly, it’s a safe space seeking to nurture the wellbeing – physical, mental, and emotional – of sex workers in Scotland. 

It’s the product of two longstanding sex worker organisations, Umbrella Lane and NUM (National Ugly Mugs), the latter taking the former under its wing when it faced closure in November 2021. NUM is a UK-wide charity working to end all forms of violence against sex workers and provide supportive services to those working within the industry. It’s a good match, offering the now-named NUMbrella Lane autonomy as well as support.

A sex worker-only space is crucial: certain conversations may unjustly see furrowed brows or pricked ears in your average coffee shop. In NUMbrella Lane, this simply isn’t an issue. While there’s much community amongst sex workers, it can also be an incredibly isolating job, with some individuals estranged from their friends and families or simply unable to engage them in open conversations about their work. There’s strength in friendship, in our one-to-one relationships, and there’s a real need to create a space for these friendships to flourish. "We are creating networks," says Urban. It’s necessary, not just for the usual emotional and mental wellbeing, but also for individuals to cope with the daily oppression that currently comes with being a sex worker in this country. 

"We're not just creating those networks between white Scottish women," continues Urban. "No, I am creating networks between the local community and migrant workers and workers of colour." Again, the sex worker community is not monolithic and it’s crucial that an intersectional approach is taken. Part of NUMbrella Lane’s wider work has involved ongoing research into this intersectionality in sex worker communities and organisations. In the future, they want to create spaces within NUMbrella Lane itself, specifically for migrant workers and workers of colour. As a migrant herself, such work is of deep importance to Urban. "We have people here who want to support migrants and who offer to teach migrants English. It’s really amazing."

This range of experiences is reflected in Truth and Lies, an anthology of sex workers’ words and art, produced by NUMbrella Lane and Arika, a political arts organisation based in Scotland. Containing non-fiction writings, hybrid forms, illustrations, collages, and photography, the anthology also includes pieces from those of different economic, racial, and cultural backgrounds, as well as those of various genders and sexualities, representing the diversity within the sex worker industry itself. In this way, it dismantles the collective misguided idea of what a sex worker is and should be; of what they look like and where they come from.

Since 2015, Arika has actively sought out opportunities to further platform sex workers’ arts. "There's a continuity with our being in solidarity with sex worker organisers who are seeking decriminalisation of the sex work industry in the UK," says Cloudberry MacLean, having worked closely on the anthology as Programme Coordinator at Arika. "So this project is one of a number." Sustained support is key. Social justice issues are all too often trivialised into trend and there are times – and there will continue to be times – when sex workers’ rights are not in vogue. But Arika is seemingly in it for the long run, their solidarity only strengthening over the years. 

And this support is tangible. "I guess we lent some of our resources to enabling the project to happen," explains MacLean. "And those resources took the form of capital, of our funding. It took the form of organisational capacity and I guess via different experiences and contacts that Arika has and the fact that we have a public platform." While other organisations may proclaim that they really do care about these issues, that they most definitely want to help but it’s just so tricky to figure out how, Arika is simply doing what needs to be done and ensuring it’s done to truly serve NUMbrella Lane’s best interests. 

Even the anthology form was key to directly engaging sex worker communities. "I think sometimes a shorter form can be a more accessible medium for artists that aren't in the more fortunate position of receiving ongoing financial support for their creativity," says MacLean. With an anthology, the individual time commitment is lessened and so, to make art and then publish that art, a person doesn’t need to dedicate their whole working life to it. 

Chao-Ying Betty Rao is a multi-disciplinary artist and one of thirteen contributors in Truth and Lies. "My work looks at objectification and popular imagery and rewriting representations of yourself from traditionally misogynistic and objectifying imagery," says Rao. Her piece in the anthology is half photography, half text, giving a much-needed clarity. "When I write I want to be quite crisp and accessible – and no beating around the bush."

Much of what is currently written about sex work is written by those who have no lived experience of the industry, instead approaching it from an academic perspective. Academia certainly has its place; but it’s not always here. Caught up in semantics and statistics, such writing can take away from the actual realities of sex workers, approaching their lives as something akin to a thought experiment. Truth and Lies works against this, collecting writing which navigates complexities with a rare grace, accessibility, and nuance. 

"There's still very basic work to be done in terms of simply humanising the sex workers and the fullness of their lives, and also breaking down a range of often very contradictory sort of myths around sex work," says MacLean. To dismantle such ideas, it’s sex workers we need to be listening to.

Art and activism don’t have to sit separately: they can be compiled together in a lush pink-covered anthology, complete with emoji-ornamented images, words that move and affirm, and a table detailing PornHub traffic and search data. And all of these independently make a crucial and thought-provoking point about sex work itself. Additionally, for Urban, its very design is part of its message. In the mainstream, sex work is usually potrayed with a certain grittiness: shadows hang heavy, everything’s a little dirty, the lighting obscured. The anthology is "completely the opposite," she explains. "It’s so cheerful with light colours, bright colours. It's really amazing that the book is showing another side of sex workers that usually you don't see in society."

Its publication, however, comes at a less hopeful time. "Politically, things have been getting quite strained," says Rao. "I mean, it's always been strained but the last few years there's been a much heavier focus on sex workers."

Over recent years, the Scottish government has attempted to push through the Nordic model, which criminalises those who buy sex, rather than sell it, ultimately making sex work more dangerous and less viable for workers. It’s all in the name of allegedly protecting women’s rights and keeping them safe from harm – but this is evidently a gross oversimplification of the matter. "They are taking people, especially women, out of their jobs and not even offering an alternative," says Urban, adding that sex workers shouldn’t need an alternative, in the first place. "They are forgetting that poverty is also a form of violence." It is not only a form of violence but, here especially, a form of state violence.

"Even if I feel like the public are more understanding of sex work, politicians aren't and they're definitely using this topic as some sort of distraction or political fodder to make themselves look like they're doing something," says Rao. She sees this as not all that dissimilar to the constant political attacks on trans rights. With much overlap between TERFs and SWERFs, the increasingly vocal transphobia within government only acts to pave the way for further suppression of sex workers and their rights. Debates of bodily autonomy are plural and interconnected, not singular and detached. 

Organisations such as Decrim Now are currently calling on the UK government to support the full decriminilisation of sex work. Amid constant push backs – notably, Edinburgh’s oncoming strip club ban – such campaigns are ever pressing. 

Against this backdrop of state violence, NUMbrella Lane will continue to offer a safe space for sex workers; Arika will continue to support them; and, individuals like Rao will continue to produce striking and thought-provoking work while voicing the importance of decriminalisation. For Urban, NUMbrella Lane’s relationship with sex workers is simple: "They will be cared for, they will be respected, and they will be loved."

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Find out more about NUMbrella Lane at nationaluglymugs.org

Truth and Lies: An Anthology of Writing and Art by Sex Workers is out now, available via AKUK