Looking Out For Each Other 

As a public-facing organisation, the Nelson Festivals Trust welcomes robust feedback and seeks to have ongoing conversations with our audiences. 

We appreciate that some content or events may feel triggering to some – however, we firmly agree with Creative New Zealand’s viewpoint that, "art is where ideas can be explored, tested and shown". It is not the arts’ job to keep everyone comfortable, it is their job to encourage understanding of this crazy world and explore a diversity of viewpoint, even if this may feel challenging. We carefully select and work closely with all our artists and contributors and believe that everyone presenting at the Nelson Arts Festival has something important to share with our community and the world.

We want people to feel safe and respected on our community forums and at our events. Nelson Festivals Trust will not tolerate harmful communications towards our organisation, staff or artists – for example, abusive posts on social media, offensive comments and harassment via email or text.

Plainly, no one at Nelson Festivals Trust has to put up with abuse as part of their work, nor do other members of our audience. Furthermore, it is our utmost priority that our in-person and online spaces are safe for our artists and audiences alike.

We therefore will moderate or delete comments on our social media channels, not make staff contact details available publicly, and encourage all staff, crew and volunteers to not engage in challenging conversations but rather step away from interactions that are threatening.

For emails, texts, tweets, and other communications, people may receive a warning, be blocked, or referred to Netsafe or the police.

To achieve the above objectives of safety and respect, we have developed these rules that apply to anything you post. By posting, people agree to abide by these rules.

Comments on our social media channels are post-moderated. This means they are not checked or edited by us before they appear on the site, and consequently places the onus on the person posting to be mature, considered, caring and reasonable in what they write.

On Facebook and Instagram, we may proactively turn comments off on posts that may attract abusive or harmful comments. On other posts, comments may be deleted, and accounts blocked or referred under the Harmful Digital Communications legislation.

General rule for posting on our channels: Think before you post – could this comment offend someone, is it defamatory? Keep it respectful and on topic. We will not tolerate racism, hate speech, name calling, abusive or personal attacks. Anything that could be taken as threatening, harassing, bullying, obscene, offensive, pornographic, sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic (or any other ~ist) is unacceptable and will be removed.

The safety and wellbeing of our community, artists and team is our priority when managing our spaces and channels.

Sadly, this pandemic is not over yet. In order to protect the performers in our events, we kindly encourage you to wear a mask while in indoor performance spaces. 

The Festival team, artists and audiences are required to comply with the latest Government health advice at the time of the event. 
We ask for your patience, care and trust as we navigate events and gatherings at this time.

To honour our duty of care for our artists and our community alike, if an artist gets sick and can no longer travel or perform, events may be postponed or cancelled. 

We will offer exchanges or refunds to our ticket holders should this happen - keep an eye on your emails and our social media.

We are committed to the safety and wellbeing of our community first and foremost.