Psy-Care Aotearoa

This season was the first one in a while that gave us the chance to engage with a full season of events, relatively unhindered by Covid. For comparison, last year we only worked one event! We put together a little summary of the stats – in total this summer, we had 62 volunteers care for 192 people, putting in 2,444 volunteer hours over six different events – that’s massive!

This season, it felt as though the caliber of our volunteers went up a level. We were so humbled by the compassion, skills and general unflappability of our volunteers across the board, and we can’t wait to have many of the crew return for the coming season.

This summer was also stupidly wet and muddy. A particular moment that sticks in the mind was on the Saturday afternoon of Galvanise (a two-night party in the Cobb Valley, in Mohua/Golden Bay), when we moved our entire care tent a few metres forward to get it out of the torrent of rainwater that was pouring across the paddock. Big appreciation to everyone who dropped what they were doing to help, and also that the torrential rain picked a moment when the tent was empty of guests in our care.

We attended a mix of festivals this summer, from huge long-running events to small festivals running for the first time. Twisted Frequency over new years is our biggest event, and we’ve been working alongside that amazing crew for years (in fact, Psy-Care started life at Twisted, way back in 2015/2016). We were also at Synchronicity, an established and well-loved party near Ōtautahi/Christchurch in October. The Lysergic Sound Delinquents are a fresh young crew, and we had a team at both of their events – Galvanise in November, and Rolling Hertz in January. Yatra took place in February, after what would have been their debut event was scuppered by Covid last year. Finally, at the very end of the season, our crew took a small team to Bullerfest and supported them in running their first ever event.

Maintaining the privacy of the folks we care for is obviously super important – so I can’t share any stories of specifics of what our volunteers got up to. As always, there was the kōrero/chats back at the care tent, roaming the stages and campsites saying hello and checking in on folks, and having yarns about safe drug use. We loved working alongside the seasoned festival medics Fest Aid at many of the events, as well as Ngā Kaitiaki the consent guardian team, and our favourite security teams. Wrap-around care really is the best way to go, for any future festival organisers reading this, nudge nudge!

We’ll be out and about at several events this coming summer, keep an eye out for our pink hi vis!

Ngā mihi,
Clare and the Psy-Care team