Camp Betty Sydney, 10 - 13 June 2011

Hi Campers
Here’s the Sydney collective’s final statement after our recent debrief meeting following the wrap-up of the festival.
The 2011 collective was formed specifically to plan and produce the Sydney incarnation of Camp Betty and this is now over so we are not meeting actively any more.
If anyone out there is keen to put together a collective for a future Camp Betty, there is seed money available to do so, so please email campbettysydney@gmail.com to put forward your ideas! We’ll be monitoring the email account sporadically so will get back to you, it just might take some time to do so. It would be fantastic to see Betty move out of the major cities of Melbourne and Sydney, so we’d especially love to hear from someone in another city or town out there keen to hold the next one!
Thanks
Camp Betty Sydney

Camp Betty Sydney – Final Statement

Trigger warning. This statement addresses issues that are painful for our community.

- Camp Betty is a DIY festival of radical ideas about sex, gender, politics and action, and was hosted in Sydney June 11-13 2011, the long-weekend public holiday celebration “Birthday” of Queen Elizabeth, the invading sovereign power on the Colonised Land upon which the genocide of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people, and the events of Camp Betty, were held. The festival recognises that Australia is, was, and always will be Aboriginal land.

- Certain themes of the festival came through consistently in the events, presentations, workshops and discussions. Race, Exclusion, Privilege, Gender, Sex and Community intersected to give everyone reasons to measure their words. Which people did. The contributions have marked and changed the activist, political and artistic work of festival participants now and in the future. It was a massive weekend.

- There is no specific standard by which DIY activity in Australia can be measured, graded or evaluated. The collective has self evaluated however in the hope that reflections can assist to improve future DIY festivals.

- Thankyou all the presenters for the panels, workshops and discussions. You brought complex, difficult issues to light and you explored them in sensitive and thoughtful ways. The amount of time and energy that went into preparing materials and content for the conference was overwhelming, what a talented and dedicated group of people. Many thanks.

- Thankyou all the festival participants. You generosity, honesty, courage, ability to look forward, take risks, and share meant that there were moments of movement in sessions that have affected EVERYONE who was at Camp Betty. It was both difficult and joyous to see the growth and understanding that was shared in Camp Betty spaces.

- Thankyou to all the volunteers and event organisers. Your promotional and logistical work, showing up on time, organising the equipment you needed, making everyone feel welcome, meeting and greeting presenters, performers, participants, briefing each other, sharing information, setting up and cleaning up was impeccable. We are a skilled and able community.

- Thank you to all the merchandise and publication producers. The poster, program, reader, badges, conference bags and more give us physical reminders and intellectual fodder for the future. The reading material will be available via this website.

- Thank you to the food organisers. It was delicious and timely and nutritious and kept us all alive for the festival! You had a massive range of needs in mind and you met them all! No complaints!

- A massive thank you to the Red Rattler who put aside Tuesday evenings for much of 2011 in order to allow Camp Betty collective meetings to go ahead. Their massive number of volunteers during the weekend of Camp Betty was invaluable also! Without the donation of space and human resources from the Red Rattler the festival would not have been able to happen. Thank you!

- Thankyou to all the venues who lowered their rates substantially, and to all the people in Sydney who opened their homes to billet people. You all allowed Camp Betty to make a home in your venues and lounge rooms for a weekend. Thanks!

As conference organisers it was our priority to facilitate the greatest participation of people in Camp Betty.

This on occasion meant that requests were made during Camp Betty for persons not to attend a space so workshops and performance could proceed.

These were difficult decisions for all involved.

We feel the Safer Spaces Policy potentially gave people unrealistic expectation.

The Safer Spaces policy can, and could work for conflicts that commenced at the conference. On reflection, the Safer Spaces policy was more appropriate for conflicts that arose between people that commence at the festival not conflicts that have a longer standing. It may be that by having a Safer Spaces policy Camp Betty fostered the idea that all problems could be resolved through the process set out in that policy. This was not the case.

The reality is that there is conflict within our many communities and between individuals for whatever reasons that cannot be “solved” through a mediated discussion. In fact many times those persons involved in such conflict may have personal boundaries that mean that if another individual is present in an event they have organised, the personal cost is such that they will not proceed with the event. Requesting an individual not attend a particular event is the outcome of balancing competing needs for participation in a festival environment.

The Safer Spaces policy makes people feel that being requested to not attend an event means they are on the “wrong” end of the policy, or are being judged or punished in some way. This is not the intention.

No one was barred from attending the whole of the Camp Betty festival, and in this way, competing needs for participation were balanced over the whole festival.

The Camp Betty collective did the best that we could, and we hope that festival participants try and understand the limitations that we were faced with. We also acknowledge that in at least one situation a communication breakdown led to misunderstanding.

Certainly our experiences will inform any future events individuals involved volunteer to organise, and hopefully our reflections here will help you in any events you organise. Perhaps there needs to be more discussions at future event about what inclusion and exclusion represent in regards to fair participation. Camp Betty would like to suggest that we move away from the idea of fair participation as inclusion OR exclusion. Instead, we suggest we take the starting point for fair participation not as universal access participation but mutual respect for boundaries and care for one another.

Wider discussion needs to happen within communities about how to make our spaces productive and fair. This is a massive project. It is not something that a short-term organising collective who are planning a festival can address. This is ongoing. We don’t know how we would do it in the future but we would do it differently.

The festival made some money.

Slut Walk made $500 which will be donated to the NSW Rape Crisis Centre. Thank you to all the Camp Betty crew who sacrificed the months leading up to Camp Betty in order to organise Slut Walk.

The Festival overall made over $5000, $2000 of which is available to the next brave collective to allow for seed money. $500 will be given to Pay the Rent campaign. $500 will be given to the amazing cooking collective so that they can buy a BBQ for future events, $500 will be donated to Koori Radio based in Redfern, some monies will be made available for projects that address cis-sexism and transphobia, and some monies will be donated to the Red Rattler Grants scheme to fund further queer community projects.

We look forward to the next Camp Betty.

We had over 250 written registrations and heaps more people attending sessions and events without registering, and lots of interstate (and a few international) folks attending – massive turnout! Thanks to all presenters, crew, venues, participants and anyone else who put energy in to Camp Betty.

We’re still in the process of cleaning up and sorting through boxes of Betty materials, so it will be a little while before life returns to usual programming… but if you want to get in touch with the collective about everything, please send us an email to campbettysydney@gmail.com

Please note it may take a little while to respond if you’re seeking a collective response.

The collective will meet some time in the next few weeks for our own debrief and to reflect on the festival that was – for now we’re just trying to catch up on sleep, work, regular meals, personal relationships and everything else that was neglected in the months leading up to putting on the happy monstrosity that was Camp Betty Sydney!

We’ll send out some email info at some point with some follow up info. For those who missed out on the sold-out Camp Betty Reader – this will be converted to pdf so you’ll be able to get a soft copy. Stay tuned for more info on that.

Thanks again for all your input and participation across the long, long weekend

We can now officially confirm that the Camp Betty Jelly Wrestling Tournament is GO!

Friday June 10

Doors open at 11pm. First wrestle at midnight.

@ Midian

19 Sydney Street, Marrickvile

$5 to 10 sliding scale

If you want to wrestle you need to register NOW! Email misskellijean AT googlemail DOT com

We want everyone to be able to come to Camp Betty, including parents. So we willl have childcare and kid-friendly spaces at the festival.

If you are bringing little ones, please email us at campbettysydney@gmail.com and let us know.

Our program is currently being fine tuned like a fiddle, with dozens of workshops, panels and events getting locked into place.

Check out our program page for the teaser highlights like the Queen’s High Tea, and stay tuned for the full schedule VERY SOON.