Focus on Impact, not Intention: Moving from ‘Safe’ Spaces to Spaces of Acceptable Risk 

by Laura Rikard and Amanda Rose Villarreal

“I want to create a safe space.”
“We want to create a safe space.”
“We want to have a safe space.”

 -Well-Intentioned Artists Everywhere

Introduction

When contacted to facilitate workshops, we often ask the organizations or individuals who have reached out to us why they want to train in better practices for creating a consent culture. And these organizations–arts or educational institutions, often–answer earnestly and often with good intent. Their answers often hinge on the idea of a safe space. However, ‘safe space’ is a theoretical concept. ‘Safe space’ isn’t an actionable tool; it is an aspiration. It is through the execution of actions that aspirations are achieved. Simply stating that a creative process or environment is a ‘safe space’ because one hopes or aspires for it to be so, does not actually make safety the reality for all participants in the room. It is impossible to create truly ‘safe’ spaces, but that doesn’t mean that artists and arts educators facilitating creative processes should decrease our efforts. Instead, we should shift our focus to creating spaces of acceptable risk.

What is a Safe Space (or, what should this be)?

The term ‘safe space’ has been long used in anti-oppressive movements. In Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence (2013), Christina Hanhardt traces the concept and terminology of ‘safe spaces’ back to the war on poverty, queer oppression, and the Stonewall Riots of the 1960s. Hanhardt notes that following Stonewall, the population meant to be protected through the establishment of ‘safe spaces’ expanded, stating that “the gay liberation organizations that arose in the aftermath of the riots believed that protection from the police would depend on their forming coalitions with other social movements, including Black Power, radical feminisms, and Third World decolonization” (2013, 1). Thus, while the terminology may have originated in the Stonewall movement, its use quickly expanded.  In the decades following the Stonewall Riots, the concept of ‘safe space’ became prominent in feminist and queer studies (Kenney 2001, 24), and it was adopted by academic administrators throughout the 1980s and 1990s.The administrative coopting of this terminology was intended to communicate support: “at many colleges and universities the mere words safe space… may signal that those inside are sympathetic to LGBT students without naming those very identities,” Hanhardt writes (2013, 30). Thus, the concept of ‘safe space’–sloganized and made into stickers–was an effort to communicate support for students who may not have been openly queer and may have been seeking someone with whom they could speak without fear of stigmatization.

However, despite the best of intentions, most of those administrators were people who had the privilege of being white, cisgendered, and male. Therefore, their adoption of the term 'safe space', whether consciously or unconsciously, caused the meaning of the term to shift towards a definition that prioritized their perspective. The result was that ‘safe space’–once a concept of gay liberation meant to also envelop feminist, civil rights, and anti-colonial liberation efforts–became defined by the privilege of these administrators.         

The concept soon became used widely in educational settings beyond administrators. The idea of safe space, as written by Moira Kenney in Mapping Gay L.A.: The Intersection of Place and Politics, is to establish spaces that generate a “license to speak and act freely, form collective strength, and generate strategies for resistance” (24). The concept charged leaders of collaborative communities–whether they be educational or artistic–with taking deliberate actions to ensure that the most marginalized within the community are empowered to participate fully. But as the concept’s name became widely recognized, it became less understood; a call to action became a phrase that was widely used in conversations among artists or on school door posters and stickers. Creating “safe spaces” was originally a complex and intersectional call to action that asked facilitators to create and implement systems that made it possible for the most marginalized participants to speak and act freely while unifying all collaborators in forming strength as a unit. But it became a slogan, something that was stated without supporting action.

Because the original meaning behind ‘safe space’ was so minimized, educators and facilitators of groupwork began to criticize the concept. Some called ‘safe spaces’ an “overused but undertheorized metaphor” (Barrett 2010, 1); others attempted to reconceptualize the meaning of “safe space” (Roestone Collective 2014) altogether. In 2013, social justice educators addressed the failings of ‘safe space’ verbiage, penning The Art of Effective Facilitation. They pointed out the problematic implied privilege that characterized the evolution of 'safe space' terminology and introduced the phrase “brave space” as a replacement (Arao and Clemens 135–150). 

Brave space was a term that both authors of this paper were initially fond of when it was introduced to the field of arts education. From my[i] white, cisgendered, privileged point of view, she thought: yes, that's what we're trying to do. We are trying to create spaces where anyone feels brave enough to speak up if they don't feel safe. Then, my mentor and undergraduate acting teacher Joy Vandervort Cobb pointed out to me that ‘brave space,’ like ‘safe space,’ was highly problematic, directing me to an article by Lily Zheng.

Zheng (2016) asserts that claiming the room in which we’re working a ‘brave space’ sets up the expectation for “...marginalized peoples to perform the labor of education.” Furthermore, Zheng explains that the phrasing of ‘brave space’ implies that persons with marginalized identities will do more additional work. Zheng writes:

Every single space in which we exist as trans people, indigenous people, Black and brown peoples, disabled people, women and femmes, queer people and/or working-class people is a “brave space.” Those of us willing to spend even more time being “brave” to educate unaware audiences are doing them an immeasurable favor, filling in the gaping holes left by an education system that erases indigenous and people of color’s histories, a media that demonizes women and femmes and innumerable other institutions in society that reinforce a cornucopia of inequities.

To all those who interact with brave spaces, if the importance of this labor isn’t acknowledged, then your brave space sucks. If privileged people are gaining knowledge at the expense of marginalized peoples’ well-being, then your brave space sucks. And if your brave space absolutely, necessarily requires marginalized people to be doing the teaching – then you damn better be paying them a living wage for their work. Or your brave space will suck.

Seeming to preemptively acknowledge the possibility for the phrasing of ‘brave space’ to fail, Arao and Clemens (2013) wrote that simply using phrases such as ‘brave space’ without taking deliberate action would be ineffective. In their chapter within The Art of Effective Facilitation, Arao and Clemens wrote that naming a space as safe or brave without doing the labor of restructuring the ways in which we communicate places “responsibility for any emotional impact of what a participant says or shares to the emotionally affected people. Those affected are now expected to hide their feelings and process them internally… [this] may even imply to these participants that their feelings are because of some failing on their part” (145). This echoes James Baldwin, who decades earlier named safety as an “illusion” upon which the dominant society depends (Terkel 1989, 21). When spaces are proclaimed by someone with power–or a dominant society with power–to be safe, the proclamation invites others to blame those who dare interrupt the peace to name the systems at play which make the proclamation of safety false. Naming ‘safe spaces’ places pressure on those who do not feel safe to remain silenced. In short, when we as artists say we are in a safe space, this can lead to the silencing of the most marginalized in the room by placing blame for harm on them for feeling unsafe when we have proclaimed that the space is safe, or we have proclaimed that it is their responsibility to be brave. Stating that we’ve created a ‘safe’ or ‘brave’ space places blame on the individual harmed for enduring harm, removing our collective responsibility to take care of one another. 

As teachers, facilitators of artistic processes, and intimacy professionals, we reflect upon the writings of Lily Zheng (2016), the social justice educators who wrote The Art of Effective Facilitation (2013), and Loretta Ross’s statements in Therapist Uncensored (2022). We must acknowledge that a person who is marginalized is already, and always, carving out a brave space within and for themselves, not by choice, but as a requirement created by a world, a society, and an industry that was not created with them in mind. We must acknowledge that safety is an illusion.

From Safe Spaces to Spaces of Acceptable Risk

In the intimacy discipline, the term “safe space” has been leveraged as a marketing tool, capitalizing on individuals’ and organizations’ fear of getting caught causing harm.  Stating that an intimacy professional will ‘create a safe space’ or ‘keep people safe’ is a fear-based marketing strategy used to convince people to hire intimacy coordinators or choreographers.

As artists, scholars, and intimacy specialists, both authors of this paper have found the term ‘safe space’ unsettling for many years. Having taught theatre in public schools for over a decade, Amanda Rose had long felt that ‘safe space’ verbiage was misleading. They recall a moment in 2017, when they were attending an intimacy directing workshop in Denver. The facilitator stated that her intimacy company believed that intimacy directors should be “responsible for everyone’s mental health and safety” (Villarreal 2017). I balked.[i] Having been a teacher, I knew that despite my best efforts to support and protect students within my classrooms, factors from their home lives would often permeate my creative and learning environment. I thought this would be even more likely to happen when working with artists whose lives contain additional decades of potential trauma. I wondered about the ethics of stating something along the lines of I’m your intimacy director, and I’ll be responsible for your mental health and safety while you work on this production. I am not a mental health practitioner; I am not trained in counseling techniques or theories. Given those facts, could the promise itself—that I would be responsible for the mental health and safety of collaborators, that my presence alone would make every process a ‘safe space’—actually decrease the safety felt in the room? I suspected so. If that’s the case, is making the claim that intimacy specialists create safe spaces unethical? And what could we shift our focus towards creating instead?

Then in 2022, Laura was listening to an episode of the podcast Therapist Uncensored which featured an interview with civil rights activist and Smith College Associate Professor Loretta J. Ross. This section of the conversation really stood out in a way that has informed my thinking about safety and safe space language: [ii]

Ross: I actually don’t believe in safety. …safety was so situationally specific for me… safety and comfort is privileged too much as a way to keep people from dealing with the reality of things as they are versus how you’d like them to be. Particularly since I have spent a lot of my career working with white women, the first thing I have to disabuse them of is this belief that you are entitled to feel safe and comfortable in every interaction in life because the reality is that, first of all, you’re neither safe nor comfortable. You just want the illusion of it. And then you want me to participate in the illusion for you. When I tell them, like I tell my students, do you want me to protect you from reality or teach you about it? You need to choose how you want this engagement to be…You’re more resilient than you think you are. I don’t know anyone who is actually safe…Safe! What individual has actually experienced safety.

Interviewer: I think that’s right. It’s a mental construct that is an illusion and you're resisting the invitation to participate in that illusion.

Ross: But that doesn’t mean you have to feel scared either. I mean It’s not a binary.

Ross goes on to explain that her students feel grateful when she explains this. I certainly felt clarity while listening to her speak. In these statements, Ross clarifies that safety is subjective, an illusional construct; there is no such thing as a “safe space.” The construct of safety is dependent and built upon each individual’s own perspective, privilege, and life experiences. Safety is an idea–an illusion, as Ross calls it–that we choose to buy into, or not. But truly, no one is actually ever guaranteed safety. For some, that can be a pretty scary idea to absorb, maybe because it means that no teacher or leader can guarantee safety to anyone. As a mother, this is particularly hard for me to digest; I often tell my four-year-old twins, “mommy will keep you safe,” even when in reality, I know that despite my best intentions, my love for them, and the actions I take to protect them, achieving the full extent of “safety” that I want to guarantee for them is impossible.

As teachers, facilitators of artistic processes, and intimacy professionals, we reflect upon the writings of Lily Zheng (2016), the social justice educators who wrote The Art of Effective Facilitation (2013), and Loretta Ross’s statements in Therapist Uncensored (2022). We must acknowledge that a person who is marginalized is already, and always, carving out a brave space within and for themselves, not by choice, but as a requirement created by a world, a society, and an industry that was not created with them in mind. We must acknowledge that safety is an illusion.

 If ‘safe spaces’ are just illusions and ‘brave spaces’ demand the unpaid and emotionally difficult labor of cultural competency, then what is the space that we are in search of? It seems that, just as we have had to accept that we can never truly make this world safe for our children and students, we can never guarantee that any process-oriented creative or educational space will be safe.

So, as artistic leaders in collaborative spaces, what are we trying to achieve? What is the name of it, and what steps can we put in place to move towards making the conceptual real within our working environments? We could not come up with an easy answer. Because nothing about supporting the diverse identities that participants bring into a room is, or needs to be, easy.

In November of 2022, I[iii] was asked to speak on the concept of ‘safe space’ for a panel at the South Carolina Theater Association. My fellow panelist was Danielle Hernandez, the Director of McAlister Auditorium at Furman University and Outreach Director for the Event Safety Alliance. Event Safety Alliance is an organization that states on their website they are dedicated to promoting “safety first throughout all phases of event production and execution” (Who We Are, 2018). During our panel, Hernandez highlighted many of the same concerns I have; however, where I have often focused on the emotional safety of the acting student, Professor Hernandez focused on assessing the safety of physical spaces. Despite the different fields of expertise that informed each of our presentations—theatre pedagogy informing mine, and building and event risk management informing Hernandez’s—we agreed on the impossibility of creating an actual safe space. During this presentation, I looked at her and said, "So what do you say to let people know a building, event, or area is safe?"

Hernandez looked back at me and responded simply, "I don't assess whether it is safe. I assess what is an acceptable risk. Nothing is actually, or will ever be, 100% safe. But what we can assess is what are the acceptable risks people walk into".

In Hernandez’s response, I found the term I had been looking for. Acceptable risk. This characterizes the spaces we are working to set up as leaders in the fields of theatre in education and intimacy in performance. When we work in process-oriented spaces and when we create products that live on the human body and require engagement from the human mind–like theater and film production–there can be no guaranteed safe space.

We cannot create ‘safe spaces’ for many reasons. A major reason for this is that safety is subjective, just as trauma is subjective. Facilitators of spaces can never know exactly what any particular person will need in order to perceive themselves as 100% safe; similarly, we cannot guarantee protection from being triggered by trauma. We cannot guarantee that spaces are safe because the power dynamics that have been historically and systemically reinforced continue to sustain inequities. This disparity is always present and felt by those who have been disempowered within these power imbalances, whether or not the facilitators of a space feel them. Until all of these things can be perfectly managed, the possibility of actual ‘safe spaces’ and/or labor-free ‘brave spaces’ is not possible.

The impossibility of creating a true ‘safe space’ or ‘brave space’ is not an excuse to stop trying to protect our collaborators. Facilitators of creative processes can take action. These educators and artists can acknowledge that no space is truly ‘safe’ due to the power imbalances that are ever-present and can acknowledge that being asked to remain ‘brave’ is a difficult task that requires more effort from those whose identities have been historically marginalized. We can provide time, space, and actionable tools that can facilitate the process of caring for the needs of those who are concerned about their safety or about what might be emotionally triggering or emotionally activating. And we can ensure that these tools are practiced, modeled, and used. By using these tools, we support those who need care in asking for it without fear of retaliation, and without requiring them to do the unpaid labor of educating the teacher on their culture.

Establishing Spaces of Acceptable Risk

Working as artists and pulling from our own identities and experiences to inform our craft can be inherently risky, and no one person can ever know or forecast what elements of performance will surpass ‘risk’ to become traumatizing for our collaborators. Therefore, we cannot codify or define what an effectively safe space will be for all involved. But we can accept that there is risk to the work we do, just as there is always risk in our lives. If we look into and learn from other fields that have more fully informed, consent-based processes, we see that safety is not guaranteed; instead, the practice in these fields is to clearly explain the risks present in a space or a process and invite you to choose whether or not those risks are acceptable for yourself.

For every medical procedure that is offered–whether that's an x-ray or a high-risk surgery–you have to fill out a form, indicating that you have read or been told about the risks that are inherent in the procedure you are seeking. In this process, you are asked to reflect and make the decision for yourself: are the benefits of the procedure such that they convince you that the risks are acceptable? Even pharmaceutical commercials don't guarantee safety when taking the advertised medications. These ads promote the positive effects of taking the named medications. And although these commercials are aiming to convince you for capitalist profit, they are still legally required to warn consumers of the side-effects of the medication; pharmaceutical commercials must communicate the risks.

At my children's preschool, the administrators and teachers are clear about every measure put in place to mitigate risk for our children. But, even knowing the urgent desire of parents to protect their children, the school does not promise us that no one will ever get a scrape or a bruise, catch a cold, or have their feelings hurt. As parents, we have learned about these risks from our own life experience. We consider these risks, we learn about the risk management policies and procedures, and we weigh the benefits of enrolling our children in these schools to determine whether we find the amount and type of risk to be acceptable given what our children will gain.

In every interaction throughout our lifetimes, we have to identify the acceptable level of risk for ourselves. Our subconscious survival brain knows this; that is why these parts of our brains become activated and ready to go when we feel threatened and begin to lose power over ourselves. As facilitators of educational and/or creative processes, it’s time for our conscious, thinking, ‘primate’ brain to acknowledge this, and it’s time for us to begin utilizing this understanding to inform the way that we create spaces and shape collaborative processes.

When entering the process-oriented spaces of making film, television, and theater, then—especially if you are a leader in that space—pause and reflect. Have you been unintentionally relying on the words ‘safe’ or ‘brave’ and to do the work of characterizing your processes and spaces, rather than relying upon action to do so? Many of us have. I’ve been there. We are each on our own journey of learning about the needs of others and adapting our practices to serve one another and our shared processes. No person can implement tools or knowledge that have not yet been revealed to them. But, unfortunately, our best intentions are not enough to create a positive impact or to enact change within our industry. It is time to remember the original intention of these words and the call to action, without which ‘safe space’ and ‘brave space’ become meaningless. Each of us is capable of reflecting upon our practices and taking purposeful steps to ensure that we are taking responsibility for our own privilege, especially as leaders. Actionable steps towards taking this responsibility include purposefully communicating the desired outcome of our processes, the ways in which we will work together, and the inherent risks that are, and always will be, part of our processes. This communication allows us to work towards establishing spaces of acceptable risk.

If you’re a leader, especially if your identity carries privilege, consider: how are you taking responsibility for your own privilege? How are you informing everyone and working to create spaces of acceptable risk? When participants express their needs, how are you working to support them, to meet their needs, and to ensure that they continue to feel capable of communicating their needs with you in the future? As the leader, think critically and in advance about historical inadequacies that might impact interactions in your space and/or process, and about how you can structure the space to address those without depending on your actors, your students, or others facing a power deficit in communication with you to point them out.

If you're a participant in those spaces, especially if you are from a historically marginalized community: ask yourself, 'what do I need?' Only you can decide whether the risks in a space or process are acceptable to you. Once you’ve determined what you need, if your leader has done the labor of creating and explaining support structures and you feel that you can communicate your needs, do so. This will help you make a fully informed decision about whether or not you can accept the risk of going into those spaces.

In process-oriented creative spaces, we can create spaces of acceptable risk. We can reflect upon our work and the ways in which we approach it; we can identify the risks inherent in a space or process, and we can inform participants of these risks. Clearly acknowledge them and accept that what is perceived as risky or potentially traumatizing to one person may not be seen that way by all other participants. Trauma is subjective, and therefore, which risks are acceptable is also subjective. All we can do is communicate the risks, encourage one another to make the decision about whether these risks are acceptable or not for ourselves, and support each individual’s decision without imposing repercussions or shame for having different boundaries than our own.

None of this is to imply that leaders are to shrug their shoulders and stop holding themselves accountable for the call to action that “safe space” and “brave space” intends. Nor is it to be used as a scapegoat by people who are driven by fragile egos to say, “See there’s no such thing as a safe space, so I am going to do it the way I have always done it.” Quite the opposite; this is an invitation to remind ourselves of, and re-commit to, the call to purposeful action designed to create anti-oppressive process-oriented spaces.  Educators, artists, and intimacy specialists need to know the origins and intentions of what may have seemed like a vague theory or abstract concept, so that–fueled by that understanding–we can craft concrete action to implement change. For example, I can make a list of acceptable risks and I can inform the people I lead of those risks before they enter the space with me and that begins to create a culture of consent. Here are three examples of acceptable risks I made for my acting classes.

• This class requires everyone to perform before the class audience. There is no accommodation that can be made. Everyone must perform in the three class performance projects. If this is unexpected and/or does not work with your boundaries please speak with the instructor so we can make a plan that best supports honoring your boundaries.

• Everyone’s work is assessed out loud, using a strength-based system.[iv] This is so that everyone can learn from everyone else's work. If this is a process that needs accommodating for your boundaries, please speak with me.

• I am a happy/energetic teacher, and often project with a loud voice when coaching. I have been informed that this can at times feel intimidating. I do work on managing my volume but should my style of teaching inhibit your learning let’s have a conversation so I can work to accommodate this style of teaching for you. (Rikard 2023)

This has helped me create a syllabus that fully informs the student of the content and culture of the class before they enter the space. It demonstrates that I want them to ask questions about the risks they are taking when going into the classroom. The full list includes statements that include an expectant culture of inclusivity and anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and anti-bias attitudes and behavior in the classroom, that there is no guarantee that one will not be triggered in this work and what to do if one is,[v] and expectations for all assignments. I am doing the labor to help the student understand that I do not expect all the labor for assessing risks to be on them.

Clarifying risks and empowering students with the agency to determine whether those risks are accessible has—as well as helping the authors of this paper improve our pedagogy—assisted students by setting up clear expectations early in the semester. Amanda Rose includes statements similar to those in Laura’s syllabus (see above), as well as others that pertain to their specific courses, and assigns a “syllabus quiz” due at the end of the first week of classes. The two questions on the syllabus quiz include one designed to highlight ways in which I should reinforce or supplement the statements in the syllabus:[vi] “after reading the syllabus and attending class on the first day, what questions or concerns have arisen for you?” I currently have 22 students in my current section of Drama Across the Curriculum. Responses from this class’s syllabus quiz break down as follows:

• “After class on day one I know this class will push me outside my comfort zone. However, I see the appeal and benefit this class will give me. After day one, I was hooked. I’m really looking forward to what I can get out of this class.”

• “No questions the clear expectations and directions made me way less anxious”

• “I’m on the autism spectrum and I’m so glad I can use button to set my boundaries instead of being ashamed of having boundaries because usually that’s how I feel.”

• “This is so clear. I just need more information on the Liz Lerman System?”

• “It’s just so nice to know what’s coming and what’s actually expected I wish every syllabus was like this”

• “In the syllabus it says we have to use drama-based-pedagogy to create lesson plans but I’m really nervous about performing in this class. I’m not a theater major and everyone else in here is. I just want to talk to you about how the expectations you set might change if I’m beginner at this?”

• Six answers along the lines of “n/a” or “no questions,” and

• Nine answers indicating gratitude for the clarity, including this effusive example (Fig. 1):

• Two students chose not to complete the quiz.

Given this range of responses, it becomes clear that students crave transparency regarding what they will be asked to do and how they will be expected to behave and communicate during class. Clearly stating the risks inherent in the course does not seem to intimidate students; instead, it inspires them to expect discomfort in the learning process while allowing them to decide whether the risks inherent in that course’s proceedings will be a worthwhile element of their learning process. One student opted to un-enroll from my class, as is their right. I am grateful that they felt empowered to do so, rather than feeling trapped and foced to continue with a course that included risks that they assessed as unacceptable. And one student, who seemed incredibly trepidatious, communicated so through the quiz. I followed up with this student. I explained that all of the tools I introduced in day one were new even to the theatre majors in the class, and that while theatre majors might have training in acting, they had absolutely no experience with lesson planning and pedagogy. We discussed ways in which this student would add to the classroom environment, and I clarified that my grading was focused on students’ performance as teachers implementing drama-based pedagogy, rather than on performances in scenework. The student thanked me for clarifying and has become an eager participant in our class meetings.

None of this is to say that our syllabi make everything better for everyone. Instead, we’re stating that clearly acknowledging the risks inherent to a space and empowering participants to assess those risks for themselves and determine whether they can accept those risks at this point in time in their learning or creative process is one actionable step that can move our field towards progress. Refusing to rely on the insistence that our spaces and processes are ‘safe’ and beginning to clearly communicate potential risks is a small, doable action. This can invite participants to act with agency in determining which processes and spaces they are eager to enter.

The only way to ultimately make progressive change in any field is to put things into doable actions. If it can’t be done, then it is not a practical tool; it is an aspiration. The call to action inherent in the origins of ‘safe space’ terminology was meant to inspire each of us to actually take action. So, remember that if something cannot physically be done, it can’t be accomplished. Can you get up and do a “safe space”? No. However, there are lots of doable actions that can be set in place to achieve the aspiration. Setting up clear communications around expectations and risks is doable, and one step towards achieving the aspiration of establishing ‘safe’ or ‘brave’ spaces by creating spaces of acceptable risk. We identify an intention—a safe space—and select tactics upon which we can act to achieve said intention. In the end, that is not unlike the art of acting in itself.

Footnotes and references available in the PDF version of this article