Safe Space Organization: Partying Safely one Event at a Time
Betty Tsakarestou Orianne NOEL Youssefmkb Sveva Cerica Claudiu Petrea
Safe Space organization is a student led non profit organization that aims to protect event, festival and party attendees from potential dangers. The conception of our idea happened after a chat about the party life in our home countries. We realized that there were no major organizations that helped individuals in cases of druggings, hate crimes and other dangerous phenomena that might happen within the partying and entertainment sphere. After some research we discovered that similar organizations were rare in Europe, but more prominent in the US and Australia. We decided that we had to make a change in the European Festival and Event scene, to ensure the safety of young party goers and of all attendees no matter their social background. And just like that… Safe Space was born!
To better understand what we had to do to make our organization function and serve its purpose we decided to research the already existing organizations and check the available statistics for the problems we wanted to tackle.
We looked into 2 main organizations: Dance Safe and Good Night Out. Dance Safe is a non profit organization that specializes in keeping parties and events safe from drug abuse and sexual violence, while it was founded in the US in 1998. Good Night Out is a non profit campaign that teaches nightlife professionals how to protect party-goers from sexual violence it was founded in London in 2014. With this information in our hands, we decided that our organization needed to be inclusive, about multiple types of events and that we had to not only focus on protecting, but in educating as well.
Looking up available research results about festival and party safety, made us come to terms with the hard truth. According to the research conducted by Jason M. Lindo, Peter Siminski, and Isaac D. Swensen: “There are several mechanisms through which partying may increase the incidence of rape among college students. The most obvious relate to alcohol consumption, which has direct pharmacological effects on aggression and cognitive functioning.The data used in their main analysis consist of 425,190 observations. Notably, victims aged 17–24 comprise approximately one-third of all victims reported to the agencies in our analysis. These agencies indicate one reported rape every 20 days for victims in this age range. The perpetrators involved in these incidents are split fairly evenly across the age groups 17–20, 21–24, 25–28, and others. As far as festivals and concerts are concerned, according to the BBC, nearly half of female festival goers (43%) under 40 say they have faced unwanted sexual behavior at a music festival.
Research conducted by Rosemary Lucy Hill, David Hesmondhalgh, and Molly Megson suggests that: “From concert goers, venue managers, promoters and campaigners, we heard of a range of incidents that fall under a broad definition of sexual violence. One concert goer estimated that at a quarter of gigs she had experienced groping (Thora), while another referred to a ‘laundry list’ of sexual harassment (Sinead). We heard from a woman who had experienced a man suddenly and without any prior contact putting his hand down her trousers. Another woman felt a man place his penis in her hand. We heard from a man who was repeatedly groped through his clothes on the genitals by a woman who would not take no for an answer. We heard from women whose roles as musicians had been exploited by male listeners who tried to touch or kiss them while they were on stage or during meet-and-greets. We heard from women who had been groped on their buttocks and breasts on numerous occasions. Such incidents take place within a broader live music context of everyday sexism that our participants described to us: of bands singing objectifying or sexually violent lyrics (Venue 1, Campaigner 1); of men in bands perpetrating violence against fans (Fran); of drink spiking (Venue 2); of arguments between women and men over the use of space (Venue 2). During our observations we also witnessed men acting in controlling ways, such as holding a female partner back from dancing nearer the stage; we overheard a seemingly un-ironic comment from a man to a woman about her enjoying herself too much; and Fran, a musician, reported comments made about her stage costume and performance being too sexual.”
To develop our idea we decided to focus on specific SDG areas. We decided to correlate our cause with SDG 3: Enhancing Health and Well-being. Ensuring accessibility to fundamental healthcare services and immediate medical assistance during events, with a particular emphasis on addressing drug-related emergencies could provide a solution for the problem we try to tackle. SDG 5: Promoting Gender Equality and Inclusivity in Events, is also important for Safe Space. The implementation of anti-discrimination policies to prevent gender-based discrimination at events, fostering a safe and respectful environment for all attendees and the promotion of gender-balanced lineups and performances, highlighting the talents and contributions of artists and professionals of all genders are very important. Lastly SDG 10: Reducing Inequalities in Access to Safe Events could ensure that community members, regardless of their socioeconomic status, have equitable access to safe and inclusive events. Implement anti-discrimination policies to prevent exclusion and unequal treatment of attendees.
However, despite our efforts and determination, we face significant challenges that hinder the achievement of our goals. This detailed analysis will highlight the main problems we face, from financial limitations to limited access to resources, from logistical challenges to lack of awareness and support from the community.
Through this introspection, we hope to raise awareness of the difficulties we encounter and to find innovative solutions to overcome the obstacles that prevent us from maximizing our social impact. We understand that addressing these challenges will require commitment, resources and collaboration, but we are determined to ensure our mission to make education accessible to all, regardless of their economic or geographical origin. Our challenge principals are:
1) Racism, Homophobia, and other bigoted ideologies have been a huge problem in most party and festival scenes worldwide. Many people have committed hate-crimes in said events, based on these reasons.
2) Sexism plays a huge part in the unsafety of parties/festivals attended. Both women and men can be victims of sexism
3) The act of spiking a drink is to put something in somebody else’s drink without their permission. This act, unfortunately, is not rare at parties and festivals, as malicious individuals use this technique to harm others.
4) People are uninformed about how they can be victimized at parties and how they can protect themselves.
Through collaboration with partners, the adoption of cutting-edge technologies and the promotion of community participation, we have aimed to create a lasting impact that goes beyond simply mitigating problems. We believe that positive change can be achieved through innovation and dedication, and this detailed analysis will illustrate how our solutions are concretely contributing to the progress of the communities we address. The main solutions are:
1) Protect everyone no matter their race, preferences, or background. Provide special aftercare by licensed professionals for different ethnic groups or LGBTQ+ individuals.
2) Protect everyone no matter their gender. Provide special care for each victim according to their needs.
3) Inform people about this problem through pop-up events, at parties and festivals. Provide branded cup covers to enable safe parting and safe drinking.
4) People are uninformed about how they can be victimized at parties and how they can protect themselves.
We found that in these events the security doesn’t really act for the victims, they are not accompanied, there is no prevention of the dangers of drugs, there is no awareness of assault, discrimination, violent language, harassment. Thus, to make this Safe Space project a reality, we established the 5 Why about the problems that we observed in events and particularly in parties; the sexual and discriminatory harassment.
Therefore, the reasons for these social issues, comes from the fact that first, people are not informed about social issues and social inequality, so discrimination, harassment, sexism, racism are internalized, and people are not sufficiently aware of this. Sometimes, people with malicious intent cannot be detected by security at the entrance. Moreover, it’s already hard for the victims to speak about this and most of the time when they tell their stories, they are not taken seriously because today it’s become commonplace in parties. Then, if an assault happens for example, there is no one and nowhere for the victim to have some support immediately.
After that, we have to find solutions with the users, because we care about this, and we want to change this situation. We created a personality type of the people to whom this Safe Space area would bring the most benefits and innovation for them. This persona is a young person who likes to go to parties, who can sometimes feel insecure and might need support. With this persona, we could now go and ask similar profiles about the effectiveness of our project. Like that, it’s a collective construction of the development. We wanted both qualitative and quantitative data, thus we decided to use a questionnaire to gather a large amount of data, as well as an interview to get more details.
In our results, 60% of people feel unsafe and many users mentioned the need for official education on party safety. This fact surprised us because we didn’t expect this. In addition, the person interviewed, a young woman, has adopted certain behaviors to avoid these risks, so we really prefer to act and educate people about this, it’s a good way to take the problem at its source. With this feedback, we were able to refocus our key points; create a safe space, have fun in safety, raise awareness of these issues and educate and prevent. The aim is to reduce crime and violence, protect the freedom of people while valuing differences, inclusion, and social responsibility to have a more equitable society.
The collective information of the users explains our choice of some design elements such as the brand name, the logo etc. For instance, the brand name “Safe Space” is not just a name but a promise we make to our audience, where people can feel safe. Our design is a design that wants to convey the emotions of trust and security, not surprisingly the blue color and open hands have been chosen, welcoming to help others but at the same time collecting the brand name in a comfortable space. The typography chosen is very fluid and open, reflecting the entire body of the brand.
Our communication then obviously has to include social networks in order to provide visibility and to reach a young audience, through engaging funny and memeable content. Therefore, our social media campaigns will spread between our 2 platforms: Tiktok and Instagram, both attract a younger and carefree audience.
Instagram Posts:
- Infographics: Sharing visually appealing infographics with quick tips on party safety — covering topics like drinking responsibly, staying hydrated, and being aware of surroundings.
- Testimonials: Featuring personal stories or testimonials from individuals who experienced the importance of party safety.
Live Q&A Sessions :
- Hosting live Q&A sessions on Instagram where experts answer audience’s questions related to party safety
Engagement :
- Polls and Surveys: Using Instagram polls to engage our audience will help us understand them more.
- Challenges and Giveaways: By offering small giveaways for participation, we are encouraging users to spread the word about our organization.
Our campaign focuses on providing information, with live expert interviews, but also on actively listening to our community, allowing them to share their stories and testimonials, which will also help raise awareness.
Our learning outcomes:
Firstly, we created our very own Non-Profit Organization and built our goals around values that we believe in and applied them in real life. We found our common issue that we wanted to address and found solutions for it. Our learning outcomes from this experience come in many forms. One of the most important ones is that in order to have a successful activation of our goals, we have to better understand what all our communities need, such as safety and inclusivity, from listening to people that interact first hand with the problems in the party and entertainment fields. The end result of this is that we found our client’s persona which helped us find exact solutions that would actually help our users long term, such as education, which we were surprised that it was considered the most important one among the interviewed people. From this, another aspect that we learned is that it is very important to adapt our strategies and how we approach the issues in response to evolving needs and circumstances, remaining flexible and responsive to emerging challenges, but also opportunities that arise. In addition to these, we also learned the importance of how we manage the advertising part of our organization, which means costs, funding, presence/consistency, campaigns, the means of communication and strategies which should be built around our user’s persona.
To make a real impact in the world by turning an original idea into a practical application, it’s essential to follow a well structured process, the process begins with the crucial step of identifying a specific task or challenge that you’re aiming to tackle, this implies a comprehensive dive into the lives of the people you want to benefit, gaining an empathetic and detailed understanding of their needs; once a concrete problem is identified, the subsequent phase involves crafting a solution that not only brings innovation to the table but is also viable and scalable, this stage of idea generation should lead to a complete evaluation phase, typically involving the creation of a prototype or an initial version of the product, the prototype is created to gather initial reactions from a chosen group of end-users, the insights collected during this period are invaluable, offering critical guidance for refining the concept to ensure that it aligns closely with market demands.
At this stage, the process becomes an iterative process by the act of refining and improving the proposed solution based on feedback, this is crucial for enhancing both its quality and applicability, this highlights the importance of welcoming change rather than opposing it, seeing it as an essential element of the journey towards innovation, it’s recommended for individuals joining this innovative path to cultivate an open and flexible mindset given the continuous changing nature of our environment, what today is a matter of certain may be totally forgotten tomorrow; being receptive to new insights, ready to adjust as needed, and open to adopting new approaches is key to evolving in the dynamic realm of innovation.
The journey isn’t only an individual effort but establishing a support network of mentors, collaborators and backers is essential, this network serves as a solid foundation during times of uncertainty or challenge during the innovation journey, this journey starting by an idea and makes a meaningful difference is built on a foundation of commitment, patience and relentless effort, by determination to advance your vision, going through obstacles is what facilitates the realization of ambitious goals and makes a substantial contribution to our society.
Bibliography:
- Lindo, J. M., Siminski, P., & Swensen, I. D. (2018). College party culture and sexual assault. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(1), 236–265.
- Hill, R. L., Hesmondhalgh, D., & Megson, M. (2020). Sexual violence at live music events: Experiences, responses and prevention. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 23(3), 368–384.
- (2018). “Shocking’ level of sexual harassment at music festivals”. BBC News. Retrieved February 13, 2024, from https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-44518892
