Fans at Lollapalooza 2018 were greeted by a towering digital sign that displayed, in between set times and beer ads, the message “You make Lolla great! Look out for each other!” It was a public service announcement from Our Music My Body, a local sexual violence prevention campaign launched in April 2016. It encouraged ticket holders to “let our staff know if you feel harassed or threatened in any way.”
OMMB works with venue owners and festival organizers to create or revamp anti-harassment policies and train staff on how to enact them. The codirectors recognize that each venue requires its own policy, dependent on a litany of factors: genres of music booked, age of attendees, size of the space, likelihood and type of recreational drug usage, et cetera. For example, Arthur suggests, a mosh pit is usually more acceptable to fans at a punk show than those at an EDM festival. OMMB takes these factors into consideration to create systems centered on the needs of survivors. They want policies to include respect for the particulars of each situation, specific courses of action spelled out for the staff implementing them, and accountability for fans and staff alike—rather than a generic “zero tolerance” approach that provides few to no concrete instructions for staff to follow. “We want festivals to see our policy as one step of this full project,” says Walsh.
