New resource supports sexual safety at festivals
Empowering young people to take control of their health is a community-wide priority.
Music festivals and events offer a unique and important opportunity to reach this demographic with positive messaging and information that helps young people to proactively look after their sexual health, including by making safer choices around sex and the use of alcohol and other drugs.
With this in mind, Penington Institute has teamed up with music industry representatives, sexual health experts and festival harm reduction teams to develop a resource that supports the inclusion of sexual health and safety as a core component in the design and development of festivals and events.
It provides a framework for event organisers based around five themes:
- COMMIT: Make a commitment to promoting sexual health and safety at the festival, decide how they will do this in practice and then let everyone know of their decision
- ENGAGE: Encourage patrons to think about and take steps to look after their sexual health and safety before, during and after attending the festival
- SUPPORT: Make it easy for patrons who have questions or concerns about their sexual health and safety to find suitable help at the festival
- RESPOND: Establish and document clear processes and procedures for responding to incidents of sexual violence that occur at the festival
- TRAIN: Ensure all festival personnel share the organisers' commitment to sexual health and safety and know
This toolkit is intended to complement other harm reduction measures to minimise health and safety risks to patrons and support the delivery of safer music festivals overall.
The Sexual Health and Safety at Festivals Toolkit is an 80-page booklet created thanks to investment by the Victorian Department of Health. The Toolkit is available both electronically as a PDF and in hard copy.
It is designed for use by festival and event organisers, and has been developed with the help of a project advisory group that included representatives of Strawberry Fields Festival, the University of Melbourne, the Australian Festival Association, Parade Touring, Safety in Numbers and DanceWize – Harm Reduction Victoria.
The Sexual Health and Safety at Festivals Toolkit includes fact sheets for festival-goers on six topics:
- Sexually transmissible infections
- Safer sex
- Sexual consent
- Respectful relationships
- Sexual violence
- Bystander intervention
These factsheets are also available as individual PDFs to be
