Saturday, July 16, 2022 from 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm PT
Zoom
An open, brave and receptive discussion organized, moderated and led by the Hollywood Fringe ACCESS committee to identify ways to institute change in the Hollywood Fringe and the LA Theatre community at large. This discussion will be on Zoom, please reserve a ticket by 12pm. If you are not able to attend, but would have a question, comment or discussion topic suggestion? Please fill out this form.
What is the access committee, and why are we doing this?
The Access Committee is a group of representatives that collaborate with the Hollywood Fringe Festival to assess and identify ways to increase equity across the festival. The committee is made up of past participants who work as an independent group to ensure that the Hollywood Fringe Festival is representative and equitable for all communities. There are also members of staff and board who work with the committee to deliver the decided upon goals, but do not have a vote on their decisions or curate the conversations to slant in any direction.
Through committee meetings as well as roundtables and workshops, the Access Committee is focused on instituting change within the festival as well as the greater Los Angeles theatre community. These conversations are meant to involve the greater festival community, and shape the festival into a space that is created BY and FOR the community.
Live ASL interpretation available upon request within 48 hours of event. This event will be closed captioned.
To keep the conversation moving, the following guidelines will be an enforced at this meeting:
- Name on zoom must be who purchased tickets
- When speaking, please identify yourself by saying your name + pronouns + visual description (first time speaking), then after speaking once, you can remind us with just your name. We strongly encourage you to keep your camera on. We also encourage you all to remain muted when not speaking, and use the hand raise function when you’d like to speak, or type into the chat that you have a thought.
- Listen and share space with your fellow community members. It is just as important for us to hear out our fellow community members as it is for us to speak up. No interrupting unless you’re the moderator.
- Lean into the uncomfortable feelings that might come up for you. If something that is said strikes an emotion within you, reflect on that. Don’t speak up right away. Instead, consider the feeling as a valid part of the experience. Reflect on how you might be able to lessen that feeling by hearing that person’s full perspective before answering.
- The point of this meeting is to give feedback in draft and it may cause emotions that may call us to be brave. If something strikes you as hurtful, feel free to message on Zoom our empowerment team: Matthew, Diana OR Michelle “ouch” so that they will be able to unpack it with you before you speak next or allow for your experience to be more anonymous. Any messages to our empowerment team will not be shared outside of the access committee and fringe staff unless permission is granted.
- This form. will also go to the empowerment team if you would like to remain 100% anonymous. We may not speak to all of the feedback submitted here in the call, but they will be recorded.
- Use “I” statements. We don’t speak for others. Speak from your personal perspective only.
- Remember that it’s okay to “speak in draft” at this event- which means to give thoughts that might not be fully formulated.
- If an issue has been brought up by another party, feel free to add on solutions, but we also want to keep things moving as much as possible, so focus on context, rather than the smaller details.
- Own what you said, even if you didn’t mean it to come out that way. Recognize that intention and impact are two different things. Our words have meaning, and we must take responsibility for what we’ve said, even if our intention was not the same as the impact the words had.
- Take a break if you need to. If you have a strong reaction to something- take a beat before continuing.
- Confidentiality— everything said here is private. We are recording for Fringe staff archives and it will not be seen outside this space. We encourage you to turn your phone off and not record any part of this conversation, it’s important for us to have trust here in order to grow.
- This event is meant to be presented as a learning and reflection opportunity— not for any part of the conversation to leak out of this room. Please do not share the contents of this brave space.
- One last thing, if we don’t follow these communication guidelines today, we will only issue 2 warnings. After that, for the sake of the health of the conversation and safety of our community, we will have to ask you to leave the Zoom room. If you do not comply, we do reserve the right to move you out of the meeting.
