27 Festivals Are Shutting Down Their Website On May 8 To Support Against Sexual Assault Campaign

27 independent festivals are shutting down their website on the 8th of May in order to support a campaign set up by The Association of Independent Festivals. They’ve been receiving guidance from Rape Crisis Wales & England, Girls Against, Safe Gigs For Women & White Ribbon Campaign. 

A while back, we’ve posted an article about the organisation Girls Against and everything they do. We highly suggest you inform yourself and read the article here to learn more about the movement.

The campagne, titled the ‘Safer Spaces’ campaign, focusses on creating a comfortable environment for all attendees of the festival. The websites of the 27 festivals will all go down and when you try to get to the website, you’ll be re-directed to the homepage of the Safer Spaces campaign.

The organisations behind the campaign are hoping that this will create awareness revolving the issue and will inform people who have experienced this in the past, that you can get support. It will also be a message to people who have in the past or plan on taking things too far, stating that that will absolutely NOT be tolerated at festivals.

In addition, The Association of Independent Festivals has also signed a Charter of Best Practice, meaning that they have informed and trained their employees and volunteers how to handle with sexual violence cases that may occur at the festivals. They’ve also been instructed to handle these cases with a zero tolerance policy towards sexual assault of any kind. This is a step into the right direction!

The 27 festivals that are participating are:

ArcTanGent
2000 Trees
Always the Sun
Ampthill Festival
Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival
Bestival
Bluedot
Boomtown Fair
Electric Fields
End Of The Road
Eisteddfod
Field Day
The Fling
Hanwell Hootie
Heb Celt Fest
Kendal Calling
Nozstock The Hidden Valley
Pangaea
Parklife
Rewind
Secret Garden Party
Standon Calling
Strawberries & Creem
Tramlines
Truck
The Vicars Picnic
Y-Not Festival