• Prevention of sexual and gender-based violence

Training against Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) towards our team:

We carried out training against sexual and gender-based violence, for 2 days during the summer of 2021, with the entire Grand Mix team and the security coordinator for our events. 

The first goal was to identify and fight this violence:

• identify in a group work what is this violence with scenarios of sexist and sexual violence linked to festive environments.

• review the Legal framework providing the definitions and the different forms that sexist and sexual violence can take.

• get Intersectional vision identifying other types of violence like LGBTQIA phobic, racism, etc.

• get a method to know how to react if we are a witness of harassment with action keys (distraction, dialogue with the victim, delegation to a manager, documentation to demonstrate, and how to deal with the aggressor).

The second goal was to establish a mechanism to fight against these multiple forms of violence that can happen in our venue:

• we implemented an internal policy after considering how to design a new policy in favor of gender equality and the fight against sexist and sexual violence.

• we are still working on internal communication to create internal documents adapted to the teams (permanent, voluntary, intermittent, artistic, etc.);

• set up a field system to know how to act during events.

Actions towards the public:

• Implementation in 2022 of a system for reporting gender-based and sexual violence in the venue, so that any victim can quickly alert the professional teams, that they are taken care of, and that the attacker can be identified. The goal is to make the party environment safer, more inclusive, and caring. This involves identifying professional teams (security, managers, bar, etc.), training these teams, signage and setting up a procedure that is clear to the public. We work with two other venues in the Lille metropolitan area, so that the procedure is as identical as possible for the public we have in common. For example, in a case of an aggression, the name of an imaginary cocktail that can be given to a bartender has been posted in the women’s washroom to signal the person needs help.

• Communication: awareness and prevention posters concerning SGBV in the place (emergency numbers, preventive actions, etc.)

2. Act for parity

Within the artistic and technical teams:

• We ensure the parity of the artists supported (welcome in residence, or in rehearsal, professional support, and project funding) as well as the artists with whom we work in cultural action.
• The programmer ensures greater gender equality in the programming of artists. When he arrived in 2012, the Grand Mix had 15% women in its artistic programming. A few years later, the count was made, and the result was still 15%. The programmer has therefore decided to take this question into account more systematically, a substantive work that allows to be at 30% parity on average today, a figure above the national average indicated at 15%. Without taking this question of parity into account daily, the figures and so reality do not change.
• We are working to integrate women into technical teams. Today, it is difficult to recruit intermittent women in technical positions, we are seeing a lack of candidates, due globally to the lack of opportunities offered to women in these positions in recent decades. To overcome this observation, we want to support vocations, career ambitions among women and promote their professional career in technical positions. We have thought about how to integrate them in the best possible way, and we have decided for the moment to ensure parity in the people welcomed, whether on internship for short periods to support them in the first stages of their career, or on positions of high responsibility, as recently with the recruitment of a permanent general technical manager and a permanent technical manager. But the sound and light engineers’ team is one hundred percent composed by men.

Within the members of the association and the permanent salaried team:

• The Board of Directors is currently not equal; we are working on it to balance the situation.
• The management team is made up of 4 women and 3 men, including a woman as director.
• In general, we invite female employees to participate in times of interacquaintance to work on empowerment in a sector that is currently not globally inclusive, particularly in technical and artistic positions.
• We also regularly have time for collective reflection, fully integrating the men of the structure, on how to develop our practices on the subject: reception of the public, of artists.