Creating safe spaces for healthy and humane events

[ryanpitts]

Session facilitator: Erik Westra

Description

Creating a safe space for attendees is paramount for any organizer wanting to hold inclusive, humane, and supportive events. We'll discuss codes of conduct as well as the enforcement and safety response plans to back it up. Help make your attendess feel comfortable so they can focus on learning and participating at your event.

Agenda

The session will be broken into three sections.

• "Codes of conduct"
  • We'll have a brief discussion on the current state of codes of conduct.
  • We'll discuss the problems often cited regarding CoCs, and practical ways to resolve them.
  • We'll walk through the creation and necessary components of a "code of conduct"—or whatever you choose to call it—including the content, enforcement, and publicness of the document.
• Enforcement and Safety Response Plans
  • We'll talk about creating a safety response plan, from taking reports though enforcement.
• Ideation and Resources
  • We'll share resources, experiences, and discuss new ideas for helping create safe spaces at events.

Participants

Up until probably 30 participants, we can probably stay together as one group. Beyond that we'll just split into smaller groups to do any necessary discussion. Each section of the agenda will have some group discussion and interaction.

Outcome

They'll have a better idea about what goes into creating a safe space for their events. They'll realize a code of conduct doesn't need to be called a "code of conduct" to do what it needs to do. They'll have had discussions about the difficult conversations necessary for upholding a conduct policy. They'll have some tangible takeaways for how to support a safety and conduct policy.

[ryanpitts]

Journalism space is accepting this session, and adding to the "Healthy Events & Networks" pathway.