Without being Captain Killjoy, effective risk management is about much more than just ‘doing the right thing’. If this is the beginning of your big break, make it a clean one and ensure your show is above board. Take a risk… but make sure to do it safely. Audiences can often recognise when something is unsafe, which will change the way they view your work. Creating a safe and well managed environment will allow audiences to feel comfortable, free to relax and enjoy the experience.
Cultural Safety
Cultural safety means creating environments where people feel safe – where there’s no challenge to their identity, and where their needs can be met. Ruth De Souza and Robyn Higgins have identified 12 ways you could make a start to make your work more culturally safe:
- Understand and know your own biases through self-education and self-analysis.
- Read and research. There are plenty of books, blogs, articles and websites on cultural safety and related areas that invite us to reflect on our biases and world views as well as the ways power and control operate. These include: critical whiteness, racial literacy, queer theory, cultural democracy, ableism, intersectionality, decolonisation and feminism.
- Attend workshops, talks, events and conferences that support you to unpack how your own cultural background structures your thinking and behaviour. Seek to expand your appreciation and respect for people whose experience and knowledge differ from your own.
- Self-evaluate and invite peer-evaluation of your arts activities, projects and practice. Ask yourself how you have applied cultural safety principles to your work and what actions you have taken to address culturally unsafe spaces within your sphere of influence.
- Find or develop a community of practice. This may be a network, a small group, or even a few friends you can meet.
- In a safe space to discuss the ideas and principles behind cultural safety. This is a group where you can collectively gather.
- Draw on each other’s skills and knowledge; brainstorm.
- Challenge and support each other’s ongoing development.
- Commit to communicating about cultural safety and the lack of it with those you work with.
- Examine and challenge organisations, institutions and structures. Think about the values that are evident in the arts and cultural organisations you work with. Seek to collaboratively amplify the values that reflect cultural safety and challenge and disrupt those that do not.
- Lead, steward and/or support your organisation towards a commitment (and actions) to being a culturally safe place.
- Above all, persist. Working towards cultural safety in your creative practice is a life-long commitment. Acknowledge and celebrate the effort and the learnings along the way
An extended version of this content was first published in The Relationship is The Project (Brow Books, 2020) and re-published in this ArtsHub article “Taking action for cultural safety” in 2020.
OH&S
This is about making sure no box is left unticked. It’s much easier to create an event when you are aware of the legalities up front – these can be murky waters to wade if discovered later down the track. Check out these Safety Guidelines for the Entertainment Industry from Live Performance Australia and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance for all the need-to- knows.
Public Liability Insurance
Public Liability Insurance can help protect you if you’re found to be legally responsible for personal injury of others or property damage during the running of your event.