Safer Venues WA starts to survey safety issues

Safer Venues WA, set up by a number of predominantly Perth music industry executives, has started to get anecdotal data on harassment, intimidation and assaults at music venues and events.

It’s holding an online survey “to hear your frontline experiences in Perth spaces, to build a clearer picture to improve the safety and policy in venues.”

Currently forming itself into a structured association, Safer Venues WA lists its objectives as: 

• Working with venues and patrons to promote trust, safety and celebrate inclusivity.
• Resource based approach to education and awareness.
• Highlighting contemporary issues of people attending gigs from an intersectional feminist perspective
• Spotlighting other organisations that already echo our vision. 

Among the questions asked are the kind of harassment they’ve seen or experienced at clubs, and if they respond by talking to venue staff, ignoring the issue or confronting the perpetrator.

The survey seeks to find out what forms harassment and intimidation take, from comments about bodies and their clothes, to propositions, shouting and threats.

It also asks respondents what they see as catalysts to harassment: gender, intoxication, racial prejudice, lack of security presence, the kind of venue where this most happens, the appearance and behaviour of the target, drug use and if it is prevalent in audiences of certain musical styles.

Studies in other Australian states have suggested that safety venues can increase by the design of the club to avoid dark spaces or squashed up areas in front of the stage, serving drinks in shatter-proof glasses, publicising the presence of CCTV monitoring, responsible advertising and promotion of alcohol, more female security, and training bar and security to look out for possible intimidation or harassment and to step in before these take place.

The frequency of sexual harassment at gigs against women and the LGBTQI community is difficult to document, as so much of it goes unreported. 

Dr Bianca Fileborn, research fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University in Melbourne, found that her studies showed that 97% thought sexual harassment and violence happened at venues, and 80% believed it to be common.