Empowering audiences to make the right decisions for themselves about the shows they want to see. 

Finding all sorts of acts whose only common thread is that they're striving to make their art inclusive, and bringing new punters to discover their work. The Safety House Guide. Safe, but never tame. 

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The Safety House Guide was founded in 2018 by Australian comedian and producer Lisa-Skye, who had noticed audience members didn’t want to “risk” going to other shows for fear of being the punchline of jokes.

 

It wasn’t just a fear of hearing tired old material bashing who they are – fat jokes, sexworker jokes, racist jokes and so on – but a more widespread wariness of audience participation, even from artists who had the best intentions. After all, audience members have had no way of knowing what would happen in a show without going along to find out!

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Enter the Safety House Guide. Open to all acts who choose to be listed and pass our comprehensive screening process. Listings are available for free, or upgraded with more prominence in return for supporting the guide – it offers a wealth of information that the official festival guides can’t or don’t include:

• Accessibility – the guide has symbols for a variety of important access information – not just whether a wheelchair can get inside! These include how you can get to the venue via public transport, if there is disabled parking, if there are accessible toilets, whether the venue serves alcohol and more. There’s also a section for specific notes about the venue or performance, which could include anything from the volume level to the number of flights of stairs.

• Content – we have both a selection of tags to describe the tone of each show, and a section for performers to describe any notable or potentially challenging content in their show they think audiences might want to know about in advance.

• Interaction – every show has a “traffic-light” rating with five levels:

  • No interaction

  • Light participation as a group

  • Individual questions, crowd work

  • Audience members asked to come on stage

  • Fully immersive performance

• Price – the guide highlights the cheapest tickets available to each show, so readers can tell at a glance if something is within their price range.