The murder of Sarah Everard has prompted a huge and very important recurrence of the ongoing conversation about women’s safety. In the comedy world, there has been an ongoing dialogue for some time about how promoters can better protect their acts from harm. Most gigs occur at night in environments where alcohol is consumed, these are factors that have been identified by many as increasing the risk of something unpleasant happening. Female acts can easily be targeted by audience members and members of the public and often find themselves feeling incredibly vulnerable. Whilst men can find themselves in these situations from time to time, it is an all too regular occurrence for women and must be stopped.
At The People’s Comedy, we consider it our duty to ensure the safety of our acts, our audience and our team as a whole. Some things we do are good and some things we do are not yet good enough and we will endeavour to improve in those areas by listening to the concerns of those at risk from harm.
We allow our acts to leave before the end of the show and will happily alter our running order to accommodate those who wish to do that. We apply no pressure on acts to stay until the end and we are vocal about how it is okay to leave early.
We understand that our primary venue is in an area of town known for its ‘party atmosphere’. We know this can very easily get out of hand and create an intimidating environment for those passing through. We provide all acts with a free guest ticket so they are able to bring someone with them who they can travel with, hopefully making them feel safer as they arrive at and leave our venue. This is not obligatory (we are not a bringer) but we hope this provides acts with an extra level of comfort and security if they require it.
We try to create a friendly atmosphere and an openness as promoters and encourage our acts to let us know if there is anything we can do for them. We are open to questions and concerns and are willing to help our acts wherever possible. We hope that the acts understand the sincerity of this when we tell them and that they are able to ask us to do things that will help ensure their safety. We are more than willing to send someone to meet an act from a set location and bring them to the venue or provide someone to walk them to their car or bus afterwards, if they ask that of us. We commit to being more vocal in our offering of support and assistance to our acts in getting to and from the venue safely.
We set up a group for acts at each event where we can relay information and use this to inform acts of how things work at TPC and use this to offer the opportunity for acts to ask questions or raise concerns either in the group chat or privately.
We have an individual who is tasked with dealing with any on site security issues, removing anyone who displays behaviour that may put others at risk inside our venue. There are several members of our team who are able to swoop in and remove someone by force, if necessary. We also have an informal arrangement with nearby venues and share information about any individuals behaving in a dangerous manner with their security staff.
We are always open to doing things differently or better so that the safety of our acts can be ensured. We encourage our acts to speak to us and hope that we create an atmosphere where it feels easy to do that. Many of our acts choose to join us for a drink afterwards as a large group. We continue to be vigilant about safety after the event has finished and as we enjoy ourselves socially.
Our thoughts are with the family and friends of Sarah Everard at this difficult time. We wish to never see tragedies like this occur again and all believe in doing our part to make this a safer world.
Solidarity.
