Intimacy Practitioners South Africa

Intimacy Practitioners South Africa (IPSA) was founded in 2020 with a simple conviction: that the moments on screen requiring the most from a performer are precisely the moments that demand the most care.

We began as an organisation for Intimacy Coordinators — practitioners working with adult performers through intimate and sexually sensitive content. But as the field has grown, so has our understanding of where the gaps are. Children performing scenes of violence, trauma, grief, and fear face the same fundamental problem: they are being asked to be vulnerable on screen, and there is no specialist in the room to support them. So we expanded. IPSA now brings together Intimacy Coordinators and Young Performer Support Specialists — and anyone working at the intersection of creative collaboration and performer safety — under one roof.

Different roles, the same principle: no one should be left without skilled, specialist support when the work asks them to give something of themselves.

Since our founding, IPSA has been a central voice in the development of industry protocols, a home for a growing community of practitioners, and an advocate for standards that hold their own on both local and international productions. We work with producers, broadcasters, guilds, and training institutions to build a sector that is diverse, professionally grounded, and accessible — because the protection we're describing shouldn't only be available on big-budget sets.

South Africa has a screen industry worth protecting — and performers worth protecting within it. That is what IPSA is for.