Women’s safety initiatives on the way
Event will provide locations for those in distress, adopt ‘Hirondelles’ patrols
Osheaga is preparing to announce new measures regarding the safety of female festivalgoers, as well as a broader all-around security strategy, the Montreal Gazette has learned.
Female fan safety has been a hot topic since Osheaga attendee Melanie Doucet told media that she was drugged during the Red Hot Chili Peppers’s performance at last year’s festival.
Doucet was able to recognize the symptoms of the date rape drug and get herself to safety; but after the fact, she expressed disappointment with how other festivalgoers and security had responded to her situation.
People around her thought she was inebriated and pushed her away, she said, while a festival employee Doucet spoke to on-site the next day told her that perhaps she should have watched her drink more closely.
Last month, when the Montreal International Jazz Festival announced an initiative in which all-female patrols of armbandidentified “Hirondelles” would be roaming its site, ensuring that women and members of the LGBTQ community are safe, the pressure quietly shifted to Osheaga to follow with measures of its own. Those measures will be announced next week, Osheaga co-founder Nick Farkas told the Montreal Gazette on Friday morning.
“We’re obviously taking this very seriously,” said the vice-president of concerts and events at promoter Evenko, which produces Osheaga. As the festival prepares to accommodate another sellout crowd of 45,000 people per day for its 12th edition, Aug. 4 to 6, security remains a top priority, he emphasized.
“We’re really focusing on making sure everybody feels safe and it’s a safe environment. It always has been, historically, but we want to make sure people feel comfortable.”
Osheaga will be adopting the jazz fest’s Hirondelles patrols, and will provide on-site locations where festival attendees can go if they are in distress or having any kind of trouble.
“I think the Hirondelles is a brilliant idea,” Farkas said. “When I saw that Spectra (which produces the jazz festival, and is owned by Evenko) and the jazz fest were doing it, I thought it was amazing.”
DEMOGRAPHIC
The safety, security and comfort of female attendees would be hard to ignore for the festival, given that its female demographic consistently hovers around 65 per cent.
Osheaga’s programming has begun to reflect that reality, with female or female-fronted co-headliners last year (Florence & the Machine) and this year (Lorde), for only the second and third times in the festival’s history and the first time since Yeah Yeah Yeahs in 2009.
Organizers responded carefully to Doucet’s story last year, issuing a brief statement saying the festival was sorry to hear what had happened to her, that its employees were well trained to respond to such events and that measures are in place to prevent such occurrences. People should not mistake caution for a lack of concern, Farkas emphasized.
“When people ask, ‘What are you doing? What new measures are you going to take? How are you going to stop this?’ you don’t really
want to tell people how you’re going to stop it, because you’re basically playing your hand.
“(But) we take it incredibly seriously. We run a lot of venues, we do millions of people in ticket sales, every year. Trust me, it’s a priority to make sure people come back, that they are safe and that they feel like they’re in a good environment.”
We’re really focusing on making sure everybody feels safe and it’s a safe environment.