Hi everyone! We're currently in a bit of a dilemma as to whether to include sensory warnings (some loud sounds) for our percussion concerts. We'd like to be more transparent about what our audiences can expect in our concerts, but a few of my colleagues are worried that this may 'scare' away potential audience members – the argument here is that there are more quiet moments than loud ones. For context, these concerts are in a fairly small, intimate space. We will be providing earplugs and plan on communicating this.
I'd love to hear about everyone's thoughts on this, as well as your practice around trigger warnings and how you'd word/present the information so that it's representative of the experience? Thank you!
Hi Shenette, Chloe, Carlos and Heath,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful replies! My apologies for leaving this thread for so long - we had a couple of urgent projects come up and had to put this conversation on hold for a bit, but I'm very glad to say we're slowly incorporating sensory information on our website (we've adapted the wording you've shared Heath, thank you!)
We decided to go with the term "Sensory Information" and we've included a line to let patrons know they can contact us for more information about the program (thanks Chloe for this advice!) It's not perfect yet, but we do hope it's a step in the right direction.
Our team did raise one more concern: as we start to provide sensory information consistently, we do worry that if we miss anything, we might be breaking our audience's trust in us. Of course, I am of the view that trying is definitely better than nothing, but what are your thoughts on this - have such situations come up for you?
Hey Anne,
We went one step further with this as we were worried about the same thing.
We created a 'sensory timeline' for our shows, example just below.
0 mins – loud music, transition with rolling light
1 min – loud singing
10 mins – scream
11 mins – shouting
13 mins – loud music, transition with rolling light
24 mins - transition with rolling light, music
29 mins – loud singing
30 & 38 mins - transition with rolling light, music
38 mins – flashes of bright light reflected on guitar
40 mins - shouting
45 mins – noise of high five, transition with rolling light, music
50 mins - transition with rolling light, music
55 mins – shouting
56 mins – smoking of herbal cigarette, smell of smoke
57 mins - transition with rolling light, music
67 mins – loud bang
68 mins – blackout, applause
The reason we did this is because we did a training session where someone brought up that if they see 'gunshot' on a content warning, for most of the show they are anxiously waiting for it.
We do not have these readily available on our website, but they are available should anyone ask.
These have also been helpful for our neurodiverse ushers and we take input from them and our CSMs to try and make sure they are as thorough as possible
Our shows run for 7/8 weeks so it has not been too much trouble for us, I'm not sure how long your runs are, if they are shorter this would obviously be harder.
All the best,
Chloe
Thanks for this suggestion Chloe! Our concerts (classical music performances) are usually one-off programs, but we can most definitely flag specific pieces rather than a general advisory for the whole program.