RESEARCH: The Music Industry Wants People to Stop Acting Like Dickheads at Festivals

Crowd at another Denver music festival – Riot Fest (photo by Barb Dye)

The heavyweights of Australia’s festival scene have had enough of punters acting like idiots, and have come together to stamp out violence and sexual assault at live events.

Does that mean we’re having a man-free festival, like in Sweden? Probably not.

The Swedish Bravalla Festival was cancelled for 2018 after reports of numerous alleged sexual assaults at this year’s event. It prompted calls for a man-free music festival in its place.

At the Your Choice campaign launch, the industry panellists ruled out going for one in Australia, instead want to focus on making their events more inclusive.

Your Choice is about dealing with some of the disgusting incidents that have been reported at festivals in recent years, including four alleged sexual assaults at Falls Festival; one at UNIFY; an incident where a man urinated on a woman at a Spiderbait gig last year; and where a man ejaculated on a woman at last year’s St Kilda Festival.

A number of artists have started calling out the shitty behaviour they see at events. Earlier this year, Melbourne band Camp Cope started their It Takes One campaign, which was a call to make gigs safer for women.

Luca Brasi also took to Facebook to condemn someone for groping people at their Sydney show.

The event panellists don’t think crowd behaviour has gotten worse, but that people are feeling more empowered to call it out.

Expect to see more messaging about being a better festival-goer at festivals like Splendour, Falls, Spilt Milk, Secret Garden, and UNIFY.

Artists like Alex Lahey, Gang of Youths, REMI, Amy Shark are also sick of the bad behaviour they see at live events, and put their names to the Your Choice campaign.

At the launch in Melbourne on Friday, the panel of music industry insiders highlighted the huge lengths they have gone to to create safe environments for audiences, such as employing security and meeting regulations to host public events, but they also want punters to shoulder some responsibility too.

They believe that people acting like dickheads isn’t a problem exclusive to music festivals, and they see similar issues at sporting events and other “mass gatherings.”
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The message? Don’t ruin the festivus for the rest of us.