Over the course of the past year, RIOT RI has undertaken the work of Gender-Based violence prevention through the Changing Our Tune Project.
With funding from the Women’s Fund of RI, RIOT has coordinated cohort meetings with local venues, a resource website for easy access to reporting and information, and a print campaign distributed to venues across Rhode Island, disseminating standards of behavior around gender-based violence.

After a climate survey garnering almost 100 responses, and multiple focus groups to get a feel for the inner workings of the Providence Music Scene, the year of work will culminate in a series of virtual workshop on Bystander Training and Sexual Assault Prevention for the Rhode Island music community at large.

Why is RIOT taking on this work, an organization that is best known for its Music/Gender Empowerment Summer Program?
RIOT has long committed itself to making music accessible to girls, trans, and non-binary young people, but we’ve come to realize that it is our responsibility to make sure the world we are sending our youth out into is safer than it is today. We are taking an upstream approach to gender-based violence, addressing the root problems to prevent the youth who we are sending out into the music scene from experiencing violence in the first place.

With that said, this project is not a reporting mechanism, or an accountability process for those who have been accused of committing gender-based violence. As an educational organization, we have ample capacity to teach for the future, but we do not have the internal resources to repair harms already done.

Why are we doing this project now?
In this climate, our organization, and our world has finally turned its attention to racial inequity and police brutality. We see gender-based violence as a perfect example of intersectional oppression--all women, trans, and non-binary folks are affected by gender-based violence at some level, but Black and non Black girls of color are oversexualized at a much higher rate than white girls, and instances of gender-based violence disproportionately affect women of color in general. In these trainings we will address the biases that affect intervention, and the systems of power that contribute tp violence intervention. We will emphasize alternative ways to approach violence intervention that prioritize community care over police intervention.
We will be offering 3 three-hour interactive trainings on Bystander Intervention.
These sessions are open to anyone who has ever been to a Rhode Island venue, be that as an audience member, a performer, a booker, a bartender, a bouncer, or an owner.

The sessions are free!

The first session will be open to Women, Trans, and Non-Binary adults on June 29, 30, 31. Each session will run for 1.5 hrs from 3:00 - 4:30 PM, via Zoom.

The second session will be open to cis male adults, and will take place on July 13, 14, and 15 from 3:00 - 4:30 PM, via Zoom.

The final session will be an open discussion and share-out open to adults of all genders, and will take place form 3:00-5:00 PM on July 27, via Zoom.


**What does cis mean?  Cisgender is a term for people whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth.