Much of the work to destabilise norms, challenge power structures, and metabolise their body burdens, is done in conversation.
HAUT's Safer Space Guidelines are a conversation. We arrived at these preliminary formulations in conversation with Sonya Lindfors (she/her) and in collaboration with her platform UrbaApa. Most recently, HAUT’s leader Alex Blum (she/her) re-formulated UrbaApa’s guidelines together with Sonya and the participants at the WORKING WITH F(R)ICTIONS workshop at Dansehallerne in November 2024.
In order to make HAUT a safer space for performing arts, we all have work to do:
1. Let’s not assume consent, but ask for it. Consent applies to both touch, questions, and feedback.
2. Let’s ground our work within our own as well as others’ physical, mental and emotional boundaries.
3. Let’s not assume nor erase the identity, background, class, sexuality, gender, or health of others.
4. Let’s respect the opinions, belief systems, and lived experiences of others, even when they differ from ours. Let’s encourage dissent, refusal, and counter-knowledges to be formed and expressed.
5. Let’s become aware of how our privileges condition our behaviour and the space we occupy.
6. Let’s strive to act with care, love and curiosity, by helping and taking care of each other. Let’s acknowledge the division of labor within the provision of care. Let’s assume that people want good.
7. There will be friction, and there will be conflicts. We are bound to fail forward. Let’s prioritise and practice accountability by naming the failure as a chance to unlearn power structures.
8. HAUT does not condone harassment or discrimination whatsoever: We will not tolerate racism, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, ableism, fatphobia, or ageism. We will not tolerate discrimination based on locality, language or citizenship. If you experience harassment or discrimination, please reach out to HAUT’s employees, who will ask the perpetrator to leave. If you bystand harassment or discrimination, please assist the affected to mitigate the harm. If you wish to report harassment or discrimination after an event at HAUT, please write an e-mail to alex@hautscene.dk. If HAUT’s employees enact harassment or discrimination, please contact the board of HAUT.
9. Let’s acknowledge that English is not the first language for most of us. Things are lost in translation.
10. Feeling safe is subjective, as safety lives in the body. Yet, safety is not the absence of discomfort. It is a crucial part of our work to stay with and lean into the questions, frictions, and discomfort.
11. Let’s embrace diversity, differences, complexity, and polyphony. We contain multitudes and do not always know what we need or what we are occupied by and responsive to.
12. Let’s practice listening while acknowledging that we will never fully understand each other. Let’s allow for a slower pace, questions, curiosity, and breath in our communication.
13. The work always continues.
