HRVic’s DanceWize (DW) program’s service delivery for the first half of the 2021-22 financial year was directly impacted by Covid restrictions (lockdown), meaning staff were working from home and events were mostly unable to run.
The second half continued to be impacted, though lockdowns had mostly ended.
This was due to the uncertainty if more lockdowns might happen and an inability for events to secure their bookings, due to wariness caused by previous lockdowns and extensive losses across the sector.
DanceWize staff and volunteers continued to deliver AOD harm reduction education and support services in a range of contexts to promote the health and wellbeing of people connected with the music event and festival (nightlife and social hotspot) scene, including at events that were held during that period.
DanceWize delivered on site services at 17 events, over a total of 25 days.
This included 15 Victorian events, one service offering in the Northern Territory (NT), continuing the 'Bass in the Grass' event run in the previous financial year, and one in NSW – 'Strawberry Fields' – over two weekends. We partnered with DanceWize NSW run by HRVic's sister org NUAA, in these cases.
DanceWize also increased and consolidated our capacity in the following areas:
the Gender-Based Violence Program with the fantastic Mae Vincent overseeing this aspect of service delivery and collaborating with the Centre Against Sexual Assault (CASA)
offering training to external stakeholders and the general public through LearnWorlds
continuing our internal induction and training of volunteers, by continuing to offer a hybrid (online and in-person) model for our fortnightly meetings to ensure that people can attend, no matter their limitations on attending in-person.
continuing to develop our relationships with other programs, including NUAA’s DanceWize program, Queensland’s Conscious Nest Program, Psychedelic Research In Science and Medicine (PRISM) and the NT’s new program too
developing the advocacy and work toward a drug-alerts system through collaboration with Department of Health and other stakeholders, eventually developing into the Primary Response Network (PRN) and including communication of drug alerts
The 2022-23 financial year holds a lot of opportunities for the DanceWize program to build on lessons learned and ideas forged during the extensive lockdown period, especially with an eye to Harm Reduction Victoria moving into a bigger office in the next financial year. This will give us the opportunity to train larger groups of volunteers and hold functions and events for the community.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge team members who have moved on in the last year and a half but who contributed much while they with us, for varying lengths of time! Steph Tzanetis, our DW Coordinator for many years, whose tireless work helped grow DanceWize into the internationally recognised program that it is today, moved on to do some important work interstate. We look forward to hearing from Steph at this year’s AGM!
Bee Hayes took over as Acting Coordinator when Steph left and is now taking a much deserved break from the program while still with HRVic, they now are working with our PAMS service.
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