Why Do We Need ‘Free Spaces’ and How Can We Build Them Together

articleenglish
Written By LOOOM COLLAB

By Steffania Żołędowska

How it Started - How I Set the Roof on Fire

The first time I went to a concert I was 11 years old - my Dad took me to a hard rock gig where I threw myself into a crowd of middle-aged men whilst realising this was somehow my place on Earth. I could not understand why it felt so good  to be around loud music and so much stimulation, but from then on I sought to experience those live musical escapades as often as possible. Fast forward to my twenties, when I discovered the club scene in London and I could not have been happier — to be dancing and finally feel accepted, understood and ‘free’. There was a sense of alignment and attachment I felt with others and my own self that I had not experienced before, and there was simply no going back from that. 

Accessibility and Neurodiversity in Event Spaces - Music Sounds Better with... Earplugs In

After spending a good amount of time researching safety in music event settings, I now know that the desire for these experiences was in fact my way of self-regulating. Stimulation through music and dancing has been shown to release high levels of dopamine, which is often dysregulated in neurodivergent brains. This is partially why the live music scene is thought to attract a much higher percentage of neurodivergent professionals than other sectors. 

That being said, being a neurodivergent person on a dancefloor often comes with other challenges, such as hyper/hyposensitivity, that can lead to a feeling of overwhelm or a lack of enjoyment. In order to help mitigate those experiences, venue managers should be looking at implementing helpful strategies such as designated sensory-calm zones. And by that, I don’t mean a welfare tent full of high people, but a dedicated spot where you can come with any access issues that need attending to. Amazing organisations (ie. Diverse UK) are now piloting these initiatives at festivals such as Glastonbury, so keep an eye out if this sounds like something you would like to explore for yourself. 

Being pushed around in a crowd can feel incredibly overwhelming — not just for people with autism or ADHD diagnosis, but for most of event attendees. In fact, access solutions benefit, and are often enjoyed, by most event-goers. Take here the baseline accessibility requirement: a space to sit - once it shows up, it gets occupied in an instant. 

This is why it’s so surprising to see such little effort being made to fight inaccessibility within the live music industry. We now know that up to 20% of people in the UK are thought to be neurodivergent, and 17% are considered to have a disability — so how are some venues not caught up with what is clearly a necessity, and not just something to use for extra “inclusivity points”? It also seems to me that we are still living in an era in which we only understand how to respond to physical requirements, leaving the whole spectrum of mental and emotional needs unattended. 

Finally, it is quite saddening to see event goers treated like sardines -  overcrowded dancefloors significantly reduce accessibility levels as well as the enjoyment of most people present. The reasoning for this is always the same — the capitalist machine must be satisfied, the profit must be made. In the midst of the rat race, we forget why people gather in these spaces in the first place, and that we are all one unfortunate life situation away from being the person in need of a chair.

Fortunately, thanks to the rising awareness on the subject as well as great accessible initiatives popping out, there are now attendees who are making it clear — they will only show up if certain access policies are put in place at an event. With enough momentum, one day this will hopefully become the norm.

Harassment - Thank you, Next

Sometimes it’s not just an unintentional touch — but sometimes we want it to be that so badly we disregard its meaning, until it’s too late. The culture we live in feeds a big misogynistic giant who seems to be thriving: stats show that sexual harassment has been on a sharp rise since the pandemic. Most women say that the fear of experiencing it stops them from going out and causes them to control their own behaviour and body language. A lot of women event goers also recall instances of reporting harassment and having their experiences disregarded by the venue’s staff. What are the core reasons for this ‘shadow pandemic’, and how can we mitigate it?  Often, these instances occur due to event managers only putting reactive measures in place, instead of preventive ones. It’s also linked to the social, racial and sexual demographic of most venue owners, whose experience of harassment has been little to none, paired with the socialisation that fed us all some toxic ideas about masculinity. In order to spot danger before the incident happens, we should acknowledge that things we have long  considered to be a ‘joke’ or an ‘accidental slip’ are the first steps towards violence. Unwanted comments need to be treated for what they are  — a first violation of somebody’s personal space.

Image by @vulgadrawings sourced from: @vulgardrawings

Thankfully, there’s lots of beautiful projects in progress, which are fighting to ensure hostility in the air is kept to the bare minimum. Personally, I found these in the underground scene of fetish and kink — where all people must strip themselves physically, and most of all mentally, to get an entry. I found that sharing a sense of vulnerability with others creates a feeling of trust and safety, which I hope we can feed to places where people are fully clothed.

The Transformative Power of Music Spaces - If I Can't Dance to It, It's Not My Revolution

It’s not solely the experience of violence or discomfort that led me on a path to work on welfare and safety at events. It is mostly the love of the music venues and dancefloors, together with a deep belief in the transformative power these spaces can hold.

During my time at uni, I took a course on the ‘Psychology of Music’,  which is when I learned about the ice-breaker effect musical experiences can have on people. When dancing or singing, especially in sync, i.e. to the same beat, we produce oxytocin, a hormone that makes us feel connected with one another. It is the same thing that gets released when we cuddle or breastfeed, it is the thing that has kept our society united throughout the course of human history. Emma Warren said, in her wonderful book ‘Dance Your Way Home’, that the “dancefloor is a technology of togetherness”, whilst making a link between music happenings and political action. It is the power that the countercultural music spaces hold that might have been the drive behind the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 — which made events “characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats” illegal. It is the same reason why so many venues and youth clubs in the UK cease to exist — because of the threat they pose to established power structures.  

That is why we must keep on dancing — overcoming our differences, which as Adrienne Maree Brown points out, are essential for the survival of the human species. In the age of the loneliness crisis and an extreme political polarisation, we must ensure music venues not only exist but thrive — so that we can fight back as a community rather than as a group of individuals.

‘No Dancing’ Poster from Tokyo, which laboured under the Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Act between 1948-2015 (sourced from Warren, .E. (2023). Dance Your Way Home)

‘Free Space’ - Let’s Hold our Hands Together

It is these observations that pushed us towards developing what we now call   ‘Free Space’. Having been frustrated by the state of  safety in the live music world, as well as inspired by a lot of great initiatives, we decided to make our best attempt to embed anti-harassment and anti-discrimination strategies in our own events. Having read about and also witnessed the social and political empowerment that can happen on the dancefloor, we decided to call it ‘free’. We want people attending our events to feel precisely that — free to express themselves, free to come as they are and move as they like. Having said that, we are completely aware that being able to experience ‘freedom’ is, and will always be, a very complex and often inaccessible experience to many marginalised groups. We also understand the limitations of our own experiences, and the intersectional nature of the privilege/discrimination dynamics. This is why we would love to make it a collaborative process, starting with  a ‘free space’ survey which we wholeheartedly invite you to (anonymously) complete here: https://forms.gle/k6ng62PrGKfPxTtW7  

If you have any thoughts, opinions or any criticism that might have popped in your brain while reading this, please feel free to contact us at  looomcollab@gmail.com 

Thank you so much,  and we’re looking forward to sharing some joy with you on or  outside the dancefloor!

 

Sources

Quoted Books

  • Warren, .E. (2023). Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor. Faber, UK.
  • Hertz, N. (2020). The Lonely Century: A Call to Reconnect. Hachette UK 
  • Brown, A. (2027). Emergent Strategy. Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press

Radio Show by Ecology of Care

https://www.mixcloud.com/refugeworldwide/ecology-of-care-guest-show-13-may-2023/ 

Articles, Websites & Resources

Research Papers

  • Healthy Music Audiences Report : https://research.hud.ac.uk/media/assets/document/music/Report.pdf 
  • Chanda, M. L., & Levitin, D. J. (2013). The neurochemistry of music. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(4), 179-193.
  • Dunbar, R. I., Kaskatis, K., MacDonald, I., & Barra, V. (2012). Performance of music elevates pain threshold and positive affect: implications for the evolutionary function of music. Evolutionary Psychology, 10(4), 147470491201000403.
  • Launay, J., Tarr, B., & Dunbar, R. I. (2016). Synchrony as an Adaptive Mechanism for Large‐Scale Human Social Bonding. Ethology, 122(10), 779-789.
  • Pearce, E., Launay, J., & Dunbar, R. I. (2015). The ice-breaker effect: singing mediates fast social bonding. Royal Society Open Science, 2(10), 150221.

Organisations to Follow

LOOOM COLLAB
Next

Écoféminisme : de quoi s’agit-il vraiment ?