Your Rights & Responsibilities at Music Festivals
Music festivals are great environments to have fun, spend time with friends, and meet new people. At music festivals, we have rights which protect us and allow us to access the services we need. We also have a range of responsibilities – to ourselves, other people, and the festival environment. This resource covers what we can expect at festivals, and what we need to do to make festivals safer for everyone and to keep our favourite events on the calendar. This resource was developed by NUAA, a community organisation that advocates for the health and rights of people who use drugs. The information in this pamphlet is not legal advice. Contact NUAA for further info or assistance.
Your Rights at Festivals
Bodily integrity & privacy: Not being illegally searched by police or security.
Access to healthcare and support from crowd care: without judgement or discrimination.
A safe, clean and accessible environment.
Providing feedback and having it listened to: Your feedback can go towards making festivals better for everyone.
Your Responsibilities at Festivals
Respect the bodily integrity and privacy of other patrons: Seek consent during intimate encounters; don’t film others without their permission.
Ensure own safety and the safety of others: Help out however and wherever you can.
Respect the land and resources of the festival: Leave no trace!
Raise issues as they arise for yourself and others: Don’t wait until things get out of hand.
Your Right to Bodily Integrity and Privacy
You have the right to bodily integrity at all times, including during police search and sniffer dog operations. Police can and will search you – most likely regardless of what you say or do. Generally, it’s best to remain calm and comply with police.
If you consent to being searched (i.e. they ask to search you and say yes), then the search will be considered legal.
You don’t have to consent to the search. Tell the officer you don’t consent to being searched and ask this is noted. You should still comply with the search, but not consenting can help later on in court or when making a complaint.
You legally need to give police your correct name and address. You don’t need to give further information or answer any questions.
Strip searches must be conducted in a private area and by an officer of the same gender as you. Police are not allowed to question you, touch you, or search body cavities during a strip search. If you are under 18, you have the right to have a support person with you, such as a parent, friend or guardian, while you are strip searched.
Respecting other people’s bodily integrity and privacy
Consent is when a person freely and voluntarily agrees to something. We need to seek consent before getting intimate with anyone – including touching, hugging, kissing, and of course any sexual activity. We also need to seek consent before filming or photographing others, especially if uploading their images online.
A person can only give consent if they have the capacity. If a person is under 16, or too messed up on alcohol or other drugs, they aren’t able to consent to sexual activity. Consent has to be conscious, and is able to be withdrawn at any time.
To avoid miscommunication, it can help to seek consent verbally. e.g. “Can I kiss you?”, “Should we go back to my tent and keep going?” Don’t assume they want it - ask and find out!
Whether it’s with your partner or a stranger, actively seeking ongoing consent and checking in helps make sure that everyone wants the same thing and we aren’t overstepping personal boundaries
Healthcare & Peer Support
You have the right to be able to access medical care and other support.
If at any point you’re feeling sick, anxious, or uncomfortable, you should go get help from the medical team, or from a peer support/crowd care team. It’s always better to be safe than sorry – don’t wait until it’s too late to seek help.
You should not be harassed or intimated by police or security for accessing healthcare or peer support. Police and security should only enter care and medical spaces as required and approved by the health service involved.
They are not allowed to:
loiter around the front of these services; or
harass or search you for accessing them.
If you do feel uncomfortable about the presence of police or security when trying to use these services, you can ask a crowd care rover to accompany you into the medical tent or crowd care space. If care staff agree that police or security presence is an issue for people trying to access these services, they can then raise it further with medical, security and police.
Your Right to a Clean & Safe Environment
Music festivals must provide a safe, clean and accessible environment. They must:
make sure patrons are physically safe;
provide plentiful, free, clean drinking water;
have enough toilets, for whatever gender you identify with, that you can access;
make sure the event is accessible to differently-abled people and that no one is discriminated against; and
provide some protection from the weather, including shade on hot days.
Respect the Land & Resources of the Festival
This is our community, and we all need to respect the land, festival space and festival resources. We can do this by having a ‘leave no trace’ attitude.
‘Leave No Trace’ means:
Minimise the amount of waste you bring to the festival - avoid single use plastics;
Take all your rubbish home with you (or put it in the bin if you’re at a single-day event);
Recycle everything you can, both on-site and the rubbish you take home with you.
Ensure Safety of Yourself and Others
If you see something that doesn’t seem right, you have a responsibility to do something. If you see someone in distress, ask them if they need help. Checking in with others does not have to be a daunting experience – it can be as easy as giving someone a quick thumbs up to check whether they are okay or need more assistance. If something goes wrong, additional help can be sought from security or the crowd care team, but ideally the community should support one another and build a culture of safety.
Providing Feedback + Making a Complaint
You have the right to provide feedback and have that listened to. It can be difficult to know how or when to speak up when you see or experience something that you’re not happy about. However, you also have the responsibility to raise any concerns and to report inappropriate behaviours and violations of your person or privacy. If your rights haven’t been respected by police, security, or festival staff, you have the option to make a complaint. General feedback or non urgent issues can be raised with the festival promoters through their website after the event.
Who to contact for complaints/feedback?
If you aren’t sure whether you have grounds to complain, or would like some support making a complaint, speak to the festival’s crowd care team. You can also contact NUAA to help you through the process.
For issues with police, you can complain to the crowd care team - often, they can quickly resolve or escalate issues at the festival. After the event, you can complain to the NSW Police Force Customer Assistance Unit, or to the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC), the independent oversight body for the NSW Police. ‘
For issues with security, you can complain to the crowd care team when at the festival. Afterwards, you can complain to the festival organisers, the security company, or even the police (for criminal complaints e.g. following harassment or assault).
If you believe you have been discriminated against by a venue/festival or their staff (e.g. you were refused entry due to gender, race, sexual orientation, age or disability), you can make a complaint about it to the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW or the Australian Human Rights Commission.