Earlier this month, Soundcheck Aotearoa launched the Sexual Harm Prevention and Response Advisor service (SHAPRA), a free and confidential service for people affected by sexual harm in our music community. It’s an important step for the local music community – but there’s plenty more for us all to do, writes journalist and Soundcheck Aotearoa board member Lydia Jenkin.

OPINION: The tingling sensation of standing in a crowd, singing along while united in your love of a song and artist as the music ripples through the room, must be one of life’s great communal pleasures. Your mind and body, entirely occupied in the moment, with no need for screens, or for conversation, but a sensory experience that is truly shared. 

It’s cliché to say music is powerful, but it’s easy to forget the impact it can have in our lives – from babies to the elderly, it can help shake off a bad vibe, shift gears, reconnect synapses in your brain, and plug into our primal needs.

We need music, and we need lots of different music that connects with us all in different ways. And this means we need a strong community of people making music who are varied and diverse and representative. 

We also need a community around these people who help the music to reach audiences, who help to create and connect the platforms and performances, and plug it all in.

And that whole community needs to feel safe, respected, included, so they can draw on their creative wells and vulnerability without the threat of harm, discrimination, or feeling worn down by the systemic issues that face our culture, with nowhere to turn for help. Sadly that’s not the case right now, and all these issues make it even harder for minorities to participate and succeed. 

Making the music industry a safe place to be is not a new conversation. It dates back decades, and has been continuously topical in recent years as various international movements have drawn attention to injustices, particularly those related to racial and gender discrimination, including sexual harm.

The discussion also intensified in Aotearoa as research and reports were released, personal stories were told publicly, and platforms such as Beneath the Glass Ceiling emerged to help bring awareness to the severity of the issues.

It’s been clear for absolutely ages that we’ve got some problems. However, much like any complex social challenge, it’s not recognising the problem that’s difficult, but rather figuring out how to make meaningful change. 

Conversations had been simmering away between many in the community over the years around what could be done. Ideas around codes of conduct, expectations of behaviour, posters, safe spaces, host responsibility, and education had been thrown around – many awesome people doing good, useful stuff. 

But the stories kept coming. I was hearing them all too regularly from friends who work in venues, and on festivals and live shows, and they were backed up by my own knowledge of a community which runs on passion and goodwill rather than structure and resources, coupled with easy access to alcohol, drugs, and a constant pressure to entertain and party. 

While there are high profile cases being played out in courts at the moment, there are so many other instances of harm happening on an all too frequent basis that slowly eat away at the fabric of our community.

Don’t get me wrong: the music community is a place of real joy and connection, and it’s an enormous privilege to work amongst such incredible creativity and bravery. But it’s also a community where it’s all too easy to end up feeling used, wrung out, and pressured to simply keep going rather than try and address things that feel problematic (or worse). 

The good news is that over the last three years, more attention has been paid to these issues, which has led to the formation of SoundCheck Aotearoa (you can read more about our background and story here). And this Music Month, SoundCheck Aotearoa has been very happy to announce the Aotearoa music community now has access to a Sexual Harm Prevention and Response Advisor a.k.a a SHAPRA. 

It’s a free and confidential service for people affected by sexual harm, intended to provide a safe channel for people to discuss their situation, find support, information, resources, and guidance about available options, referrals to other services, advocacy, and consultation and advice on creating safer spaces.

The service was created after an in-depth and lengthy process of community consultation, expert advice, and searching for and finding funding. It fills a glaring gap for many in the music community, where many are self-employed or sole-traders, and many more are part of small businesses who don’t have the resources to employ HR people. 

Add to this the complex power dynamics and hierarchies in music, as well as a lot of people casually and creatively collaborating, and we have a perfect set up for a lot of murky behaviour going unchecked – and that’s before we complicate the picture with audiences and punters.

We also live in a time where going to the police, the Human Rights Commission, or a lawyer aren’t always practical, accessible, or straightforward options – and often seem like intimidating processes to pursue. So the SHAPRA service is an important, accessible step in helping the music community to tackle the problems they’re experiencing.

But it’s also only one part of a much broader body of work we all need to do. We have a legal and social system that often seem to fail in helping survivors or those doing harm, and it’s abundantly clear that culture change in these areas is not wholly brought about by policies and punishment.

Education is key to prevention, along with clear and open communication, and persistent conversations and practical resources. Beyond this, there is so much we can learn from non-western practices and perspectives to figure out how we can proceed if we make healing as a community a priority.

When many people came together two years ago as part of the consultation process to collectively turn our minds to making our community a better place, it was heavy and confronting. But it was also incredibly heartening to see the number of people who gave their time and energy and made themselves vulnerable in order to try and work on these issues. Our community definitely wants change. We can’t let these priorities slip away.

Read more about the SHAPRA service and the fantastic work of Soundcheck Aotearoa here