Comfortable

Our aim is for every person who gets involved with this project to feel comfortable enough to stay involved, even if the story makes us uncomfortable sometimes. We all need to feel comfortable in order to be open to experiencing things. This page outlines some of the ways we support you to get comfortable, and some thoughts about how you can help yourself as well. It also covers consent, wellbeing and safety.

Comfortable / Uncomfortable

Our aim is for every person who gets involved with this project to feel comfortable enough to stay involved.
We all need to feel comfortable in order to be open to experiencing things. When we’re uncomfortable, we close off, we defend, we hoard resources. When we’re comfortable enough to be open, we can give and we can receive.
The characters in our story/world want to be comfortable too, but sometimes they are uncomfortable because that’s what happens in a story, and therefore sometimes we are uncomfortable.
Interacting with other people, exploring stories and characters, talking about aspects of our lives, and also managing physical conditions - these can all be uncomfortable things.
So it’s just as important to us that we’re able to stay inside ‘uncomfortable’ sometimes; to ask ourselves (and each other), “Do you want to stay in this particular feeling of being uncomfortable? And are you able to?”

Response Able

As a company, we can acknowledge and make provision for specific access support needs in the room, but we must also ensure that everyone participating is free to take responsibility for themselves where they can.
Where they can: that’s a crucial aspect of this. To us, the word ‘responsible’ means response-able.
So it’s important to avoid getting in the way of people being able to respond to their own needs, and it’s important to acknowledge that there are times when a person can’t easily respond to their own needs. For the latter, we have a process called Accompanying.

Responding to your own needs

There are three areas we think are important when it comes to maintaining the right kind of comfortable. They are:

• Environmental control
• Emotional awareness
• Informed consent

Environmental control

A big part of being comfortable is having control over your own physical environment. Our gatherings might be in person or online. Obviously, when you’re connecting with us remotely, you are more in control of your physical environment.
The Access Accord will tell you what we intend to provide in terms of the things we control, like having a quiet space available. Here are some suggestions of things you might be best placed to provide for yourself.

Food and drink

In person, we will gather and then provide information about:

• whether food and drink will be available at or near the gathering, and what kind, and roughly what sort of cost, and how to find it
• what facilities might be available in terms of storing and preparing your own food and drink; we will always endeavour to give you the option to bring your own food
• information we have about anyone with a severe allergy which might preclude the presence of certain ingredients

Remotely, you might want to:

• make food plans in advance of a gathering, so preparation is simple and food easily accessible
• have hot and/or cold drinks within easy reach before we start

Focus

In person, you are likely to be in a group of people, and in a room of different activities all going on at once. In advance, we’ll give you an idea of how big that group might be, and the activities that might be taking place, so you can make informed decisions about your own ability to focus under those circumstances and provide for yourself accordingly. We welcome you bringing your own noise-cancelling headphones, Loops etc. We will provide some ear-plugs and have some back-up ear defenders.
Online, it can be helpful to log in from a place with a reliable internet connection, where you can be physically comfortable, and there isn’t much distracting background noise or activity. You can let others in the vicinity know in advance that you'll be busy for the duration of the session. Taking care of pets, children, and any caretaking responsibilities in advance of a gathering where possible may also limit distractions.

Comforting Stuff

Whether we are gathering in person or online, you are welcome to have things that make you comfortable sitting or moving around, including things that help you regulate yourself, like cushions, weighted blankets, or fidget toys. Feel free to bring whatever you want and/or need, to our in-person gatherings.

Personal First Aid

You’re also welcome to bring anything you might use as the best ‘first aid’ to help yourself in specific situations you know you might encounter.

Emotional Awareness

Am I okay? Is everyone okay?
Whether we are in a room or online together, the most important aspect of this process is to be a human being who is connecting with a story, and with aspects of yourself, and potentially also with other human beings.
It can be easy to get caught up in the moment and experience some of the emotions that your character, or other people’s characters, are experiencing in the story. This can result in the character’s feelings blurring with your feelings, and/or vice versa.
This kind of shared experience can give some useful catharsis: finding some release for strong emotions in a controlled and considered way. It could be argued that this is, in fact, the purpose of storytelling.
But this kind of blurring of emotions can also feel overwhelming, and have a lingering impact that isn’t necessarily positive.
Talking out-of-character about what the characters are experiencing can give the people who are playing those characters:

• a useful objective distance from their character/s
• an opportunity to consider their character/s responses and behaviours
• some objective views of other participants
• the support of a collaborative process

Even in moments when it might be difficult to feel compassionate towards a character, it's helpful to assume that the person playing that character feels some compassion towards them, or at least has some understanding of why they are doing the things they're doing.
Inside the story or outside of it, if something seems out of place or unusual between participants, it's really helpful to check in with each other: shared information smooths the path of collaboration.
There are some guidelines around Accompanying to help players and facilitators maintain as supportive a space as possible.
There's no obligation to actively help others if you don't you feel response-able in that moment. It's okay to help people connect with someone else who is response-able and then move away.

Informed Consent

Consenting to stay in the space and in the experience is the ultimate safety valve. Since consent is a thing that must be continuously re-given from moment to moment, we can always withdraw it and leave: the ultimate protection.
Knowing and acknowledging this allows us to consider whether we can stay and remedy anything uncomfortable that doesn’t feel like a valuable part of the process.

Information

Giving informed consent obviously requires having information. We will always do our best to keep you informed about aspects of the process that we are able to know. Since this project is broadly collaborative, you will also need to be informed by, and inform, other participants throughout the process. This all requires communication.

Communicating around consent

Even when we’re engrossed in story and character, we remain participants in the process throughout. It is of primary importance that we communicate with each other as participants whenever we need to.
Participation in this project is a declaration of intention to:

• ask for and be clear about consent
• clearly give or refuse consent
• appropriately express discomfort if consent is in question
• compassionately respond to someone who expresses discomfort

Of course, it’s not always that simple. There is support for anyone to navigate consent issues via Accompanying, the law of freedom, and the presence of people such as mental health first aiders.
Groups of participants working together can also agree on measures and tools to use within a specific activity and for a limited period of time. For example, introducing a safe word whilst discussing a sensitive topic.

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