Violence against and harassment of women at festivals and other events is a huge problem around the world that hasn’t yet been adequately addressed by event organizers. Safer Spaces, a new UK-based initiative, is aiming to change that — the organization has been working hard to create safe, inclusive festivals and events free from sexual violence and harassment.
Safer Spaces was launched last year by Anna MacGregor, who has worked in the domestic abuse and sexual violence space for over 10 years, following a successful pilot run at Cornwall’s Boardmasters Festival. “We delivered the first Safer Spaces pilot there with about 100 volunteers,” explains MacGregor, “and it was very well received. We had about 260 feedback forms from women and girls telling us how much safer they felt with us there.”
Safer Spaces’ initiatives at festivals include physical tents where women can go to report instances of sexual assault, speak with trained volunteers – who are all safeguarding professionals in their day jobs – who provide education around topics like body positivity and consent, or just hang out and do their hair and makeup in a safe place.
“We’re gender informed, but we’re gender inclusive,” says MacGregor. “We provide safety for everybody that needs it, but we very much target women and girls in terms of creating a safe space for them.”
Safer Spaces also has a large outreach team that does bystander intervention at events to speak to as many people as possible, challenge behaviors, and have open conversations to further educate festivalgoers around these topics. Importantly, MacGregor says, the team is embedded in the festival —they dance, have fun, and interact naturally with others in attendance, as opposed to policing everyone and ruining the vibe.
In addition, the team provides training for all festival staff, including security, to make sure that they understand how to respond to incidents in the right way, and consults on the festival setup to prevent things like dark, secluded areas, for example.
“Most of what we do is focused around creating a really calm, safe environment for somebody to come and access if they've experienced anything,” says MacGregor, “and trying to change and redesign the social norms and cultures that perpetuate violence against women and girls — to really challenge the behaviors and the environment so that everybody can be safe. It’s about changing the whole structure of those events and festivals right from the beginning of the planning.”
The issue of sexual violence is very complex, and MacGregor notes that it is still a difficult topic to broach in the male dominated environment of live event management, and that many festival and event organizers still don’t realize the full extent of the problem at their events.
“When I do my training, I try to really destigmatize it,” explains MacGregor. “So our team is part of all those conversations right from the start. We train up all of the senior management, and it cascades down so that everybody has an understanding of what their escalation pathway is. In order for us to deliver a successful service, we need to make sure that everybody onsite understands how to respond someone reports an incident and how to get people to us.”
The current climate of the #MeToo movement and the publicization of several high-profile sexual misconduct cases in the US and the UK have paved the way for Safer Spaces to make a real difference at festivals as these issues are increasingly brought to light and people become more comfortable speaking about these topics.
It’s also good timing for the continued rollout of Safer Spaces, as MacGregor notes that there is a heightened level of anxiety among festivalgoers as in-person events return, particularly because many of the younger attendees have been isolating for the past couple years and may never have had a concert or festival experience before.
In addition, she has noticed that there seems to be an increase in drug and alcohol use as people are finally able to enjoy being out again. “We're all about harm reduction,” she says. “We're not there to ruin your festival experience, we’re just there to make sure things are done safely.”
As of now, Safer Spaces is contracted to attend seven more festivals in 2022 — but that number will hopefully still go up — and is focused on the UK, although MacGregor and her team attended an event in Saudi Arabia last year and are looking to expand their presence to the US and around the world as well.
“There have been a lot of messaging campaigns around event safety, but we haven’t seen a change,” says MacGregor. “We need something a little bit more tangible, on the ground, in your face. And we need crisis support as well — most importantly, we need to make sure it’s done properly so we don’t do more harm than good when dealing with these sensitive situations.”