Your Choice is a music industry supported campaign to address the growing cultural issues around behavior and lack of personal accountability within Australian venues and event spaces.
There is a shared responsibility and shared accountability between event organizer/ venue owner and patrons. As an industry, we are working hard to provide the safest environments for patrons to have a good time. We are committed to continually evolving our practices of harm minimization and sharing that information.
These issues are not exclusive to the music industry, they are issues within our Australian society. However, as a community of festival promoters, venue owners, artists, promoters and managers, labels, publicists and more, we are committed under the Your Choice banner, to work together to raise awareness of this important cultural issue, encourage a more positive conversation with our audiences and come up with preventative strategies to support and enhance those already in place.
The goal of Your Choice is to help influence a culture of positive behaviour through shared responsibility – together as industry organisers and patrons attending.
- Everyone has the right to a good time, without the actions of the minority coming at personal and/or public expense. We want to see an inclusive, supportive, safe, fun time had by all.
- Both organisers and patrons share responsibility in creating the safest and most enjoyable experience.
- Our culture today demands a preventative conversation, not a reactive one. We want to start by focusing attention and growing awareness on what is acceptable and expected behaviour, not just telling people to be warey and vigilant or providing reactive solutions after the fact.
- As a society, we all have a responsibility to encourage people to think harder about the impact their choices have on the wider community and we need to be vocal about this, calling it out when we see it
- Efforts are required today to ensure our industry is protected and can continue to nurture the ideas of young cultural entrepreneurs and give young artists a space to develop and grow
Your Choice is about being culturally proactive, we don’t want to stick our heads in the sand around any of these issues and pretend they’re not happening. As industry representatives, we will continue to work with the public, emergency services, community groups and government agencies to develop informed and preventative strategies rather than legislative, restrictive solutions.
Your Choice aims to build on the great work being done by the VIC Sexual Assault Task Force, Listen, Camp Cope’s It Takes One and various other campaigns by calling on everyone in our industry and all our patrons to adopt a code of conduct and a zero-tolerance policy around expected and accepted behaviour, the Your Choice House Rules (you can view here). Your Choice is working to be a support system to sit alongside current initiatives that are already in place, and help foster new ideas for harm minimisation.
Your Choice is having positive discussions with VIC Government Ministers and look forward to their involvement in the coming weeks.
How Will Your Choice Effect Change?
- The Your Choice website (your-choice.net.au) will function as a resource platform for venues, artists, festivals and other industry bodies to share information on policy, service providers, and ideas regarding safety and best practice.
- A place for conversation, education, debate and interaction between industry and policy makers. An exchange platform of what is working and ways we can all benefit from new ideas.
- Your Choice invites everyone to implement the Your Choice House Rules and Your Choice logo across their website, social media platforms, festival and event sites, marketing collateral and venues as a reminder to everyone of the expected and accepted behavouir in their environment.
- Your Choice will work alongside promoters, venues and industry to promote their current strategies and new ideas, and if requested, help push those ideas out to a national audience.
- Your Choice will continue to talk openly and honestly with the public about the impact of individual’s choices, and encourage people to think before they act.
We want to get the message out that as an industry we take this responsibility seriously and are working hard to ensure patron safety is paramount. But the reality is that we can only do so much, we need the help of our patrons as well.
CALL TO ACTION: WE ARE ASKING MUSIC LOVERS, TO STAND WITH US AS AN INDUSTRY
We are inviting all artists, festivals, companies (agents, promoters), venues, media, brands and fans to join this movement by changing their Facebook profile page to the Your Choice logo as a show of solidarity for the whole day on July 18th you can download the logo here: your-choice.net.au
