Party hearty, but safely

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/04/2020 (2147 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Riding a wave of collective euphoria enveloped by pulsing music in a darkened venue is a liberating, inhibition-lowering, sense-heightening experience for many.

Dance floors and festival grounds across Manitoba attract people by the hundreds and thousands — absent of public-health orders — for an escape from the daily grind.

And while alcohol, weed and illicit substance use can permeate such events, a couple of public-health nurses are collaborating with revellers to build a safer party culture.

Bryce Koch and Joseph Keilty are the founders of Project Safe Audience, a harm-reduction and education initiative launched in 2016 to promote safer substance use in Winnipeg’s rave scene. It has grown into a full-fledged community outreach project led by a board of directors and more than 50 volunteers.

Koch said he was struck with the idea to introduce harm-reduction measures to the city’s rave scene while studying nursing at the University of Manitoba.

Having volunteered in the medical tent at major electronic dance music events in British Columbia, where safer substance use trumped stigma, the former paramedic wanted to do more for his peers in Winnipeg and offer similar supports: drug testing, substance-use information, free condoms and safe-sex supplies, ear plugs, sterile snorting straws and mental-health crisis counselling.

‘I had been going to raves and music events for a pretty long time and I was noticing a bit of a gap in health information that was targeting this audience’– Bryce Koch

“I had been going to raves and music events for a pretty long time and I was noticing a bit of a gap in health information that was targeting this audience,” said Koch, 28.

“A lot of my friends, a lot of my peers in the community were taking substances, but they didn’t really understand what they were putting into their body, didn’t know how much they were putting into their body, and I would have people coming to talk to me with conflicting information.”

Koch enlisted the help of Keilty, a friend and fellow nursing student. They set up their first booth at a rave in Winnipeg a little more than three years ago. Using their own cash to buy supplies, the pair handed out pamphlets on how to safely use party drugs, condoms and ear plugs, and created the first connections that would establish Project Safe Audience in Manitoba.

“Reducing stigma, it’s creating a culture of safety, it’s advocating for more progressive laws,” said Keilty, 27. “It’s creating the culture where we can talk about it openly and honestly and create a safer environment.

“I love the philosophy of meeting of people where they’re at, having open and honest conversations, and creating the environment that could allow people to actually be safe and challenge old policies,” he said.

In the past year, Project Safe Audience volunteers have worked festivals and dozens of events, offering drug testing, mental-health crisis intervention, information and peer support. Keilty and Koch have also started providing harm-reduction training for venue owners, festival directors and are collaborating with community partners on best practices to engage people using meth, opioids and other potentially deadly substances.

“Having this harm-reduction stance and working with a population that uses substances — and incorporating people who use substances into an organization that works in this area — we’ve found that a lot of the information we gather is applicable in many other practices,” Koch said.

“In the last couple years, that’s something we’ve really been focused on: taking what we’ve learned and applying it to community health practices, applying it to addictions treatments, applying it to other harm-reduction programs.”

Project Safe Audience remains volunteer-led and committed to involving peers in the festival and rave scene, Koch said, allowing the organization to nimbly respond to the needs of their community.

With events cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Project Safe Audience has pivoted its community outreach to inform people who use substances on how to do so safely while slowing the spread of the virus.

Koch recently hosted an online video chat — accompanied by slides reminding people to wipe down drug packaging, keep equipment clean and how to prepare if their supply becomes disrupted — to explain what harm reduction can mean during an outbreak.

“We have information that we can give people to help make better health decisions during this pandemic,” Koch said.

“Within nursing it’s deeply ingrained that you are to work with your client, you don’t hold all the answers, you have privileged knowledge but that is something you want to share with your client and work with your client to find the best health outcomes.”

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca