Emma Thompson will be in Trafalgar Square in London every day next week urging people to visit their local massage parlour to find out for themselves the truth about the sex industry.

The Oscar-winning actress and screenwriter has spent most of the past year working on an art show about sex slavery, which takes over the north terrace of the square for eight days from tomorrow.

She is convinced that police will be able pierce the culture of fear and silence around sex-trafficking gangs only if the public gets involved in bringing out the truth.

“Get involved and keep your eyes open,” she said yesterday. “Wander into massage parlours and see if any of the girls speak English. If you live in a quiet suburban street, what’s going on with the house on the corner where the curtains are drawn and there are always men wandering in and out?”

The show, Journey, dramatises the brutal experience of trafficked women through displays mounted in seven purpose-built transport containers.

Thompson used her profile to secure an interview with Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London. He agreed to mount the show in Trafalgar Square, equidistant from the seat of government in Westminster and the heart of the sex trade in Soho.

Visitors will be taken from the reassuring comfort of a simple bedroom in a family home to the horror of a locked room in London where the newly broken prostitute might be expected to service 40 clients a day.

The show is in support of the Helen Bamber Foundation, a charity that rehabilitates people who have suffered gross human rights violations.

Anish Kapoor, the Turner Prize-winning artist, and Sandy Powell, the Oscar-winning costume designer, are among the creative talents who have worked on it.

“Do you want this going on in your city? If you don’t what are you going to do about it?” Thompson said. “You can’t rely on the Government because they are starved of information.”

Journey will move to Glasgow and Liverpool later this year, after which Thompson hopes to take it to the Eastern European countries where many victims originate. It will be in Trafalgar Square every day between 12noon and 8pm until September 30.

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