Ahoy, to celebrate the launch of #rabble13 and put a bit of steam behind our Patreon we’re absolutely peaked to say we’ve poached the legend that is Fiona Measham from the Club Health Conference to do a presentation on her rave related research and harm reduction work. And to make a real occasion of it, we’re gonna fittingly screen Notes On Rave In Dublin too. It’s been a bit of a scramble, so sorry for the late notice.
Fiona Measham Presentation
Fiona Measham is Professor of Criminology at Durham University by day and heads up The Loop by night, a harm reduction service whose forensic testing at festivals and clubs like Manchester’s Warehouse Project has made headlines around the world.
Founded in 2013, The Loop has been expanding its information, advice and welfare support at a time when drugs services have been severely curtailed. A true harm reduction pioneer, she introduced ‘front of house’ Multi Agency Safety Testing (MAST) to the UK in 2016.
Fiona has been tracking trends in party chemical use and the wider night time economy since the early days of the rave scene and bore expert testimony for Fabric during the court case battles to keep the club open. She also sits on a number of committees including ACMD and the Lib Dem cannabis regulation expert panel, seeing policy making behind the scenes from David Nutt’s sacking through to the passing of the Psychoactive Substances Act.
Fiona will talk us through her pioneering work, the introduction of MAST, the battle for Fabric, and outline just what can be done to prevent bad things happening in the intersecting worlds of clubbing and recreational drug use.
Notes On Rave Screening
To round the event off, for all those rabble fans that missed out on the two sold out shows at the Audi Dublin International Film Festival, we’re putting on a screening of Notes On Rave In Dublin.
It’s a roller coaster ride through the birth pangs of dance music in our dirty old town. From the democratic romance of those early loved up dancefloors to how a cold social stratification and commercialisation crept back. Leaving it up to a network of outsider labels, pirates and ravers to establish an indigenous scene that we now call our own. This is a story of how an underground works, mutates and survives.
An old mucker of ours, Ciaran Moore, is going to compere the event. He’s a stalwart of the Irish radical media scene who has no shame rolling up his sleeves and has gotten down and dirty over the years working on Indymedia.ie and going on to manage Dublin Community Television on shoe-string budgets for several years.
Ciaran helped produce Notes On Rave In Dublin and was a regular raver at haunts like the UFO and elsewhere. So, it was only natural we drag him along to introduce this screening of the doc, give us some of his alternative media prattle and make the case for why you should support our Patreon.
Launching Our Fundraising Scheme
The event will mark the launch of our Patreon campaign online. rabble’s always played a cute money game, be it selling merch, hawking ads, running gigs and taking donations. Truth be told, these incomes only ever covered a fraction of our costs. Our financial longevity lay in the double jackpot of our Fund:it campaign and two summers shoulder to shoulder with the Workers Beer Company slopping out pints at festivals and that dosh is running out fast.
Putting together a permanent fundraising structure, will free us of the constant need to hustle on the financial front and let us get on with what we do best – producing media, cos face it folks, we ain’t got no MBAs in our ranks. We want to use the Patreon platform to build a network of people willing to put their money where their mouth is and support alternative media makers.
More importantly, through Patreon we can give you an insight into our work, bring readers closer to the project and build a real radical media community around our work.
The event is donation based and we’re gonna have a few “refreshments” coming in from our friends at Trouble Brewing.
As this is a screening and a talk, places are rather limited so please RSVP via Eventbrite to avoid disappointment. Anyone chancing it on the night will be first come first served etc. It’s happening in the Ireland Institute at 27 Pearse St, Friday May 26th at 7pm.