CARES- Caring & Awareness Work für Sicherheit und Inklusion
How do safe spaces emerge in public settings? The project investigates the work of awareness teams at festivals at the intersection of care and security as an aesthetic practice and derives practical recommendations.
Factsheet
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Schools involved
Bern Academy of the Arts
Business School - Institute(s) Institute for New Work
- Research unit(s) People & Organisation
- Strategic thematic field Thematic field "Caring Society"
- Funding organisation BFH
- Duration (planned) 01.01.2026 - 31.12.2026
- Head of project Prof. Dr. Nada Endrissat
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Project staff
Prof. Dr. Yvonne Schmidt
Prof. Dr. Nada Endrissat - Keywords care work, awareness-team, caring space, safety, safe space, public space, inclusion, care aesthetics, aesthetic practice
Situation
Safety is a basic need in democratic societies – yet designing public spaces to be safe and inclusive is complex. The project examines which practices contribute to the creation of “safe spaces.” Its central focus is the work of awareness teams at festivals, who act preventively and de-escalate situations in order to protect people from harassment and violence. The project opens up a new field of research at the intersection of care, work, and safety. It combines perspectives from the sociology of work with approaches from theatre and performance studies in the field of care aesthetics to analyze the still under-researched work of awareness teams. While the sociology of work provides insights into new forms of voluntary and professional activity, performance studies highlight the aesthetic and embodied dimensions of this work – embodied knowledge that shapes decision-making in critical situations. In this way, caring work becomes visible as both a social and a bodily-aesthetic practice. Using the Buskers Festival as a case study, we examine how actors assume responsibility for safety and inclusion and which conditions – from cooperation with security staff and institutional support to shared codes and practices – make this possible. The aim of the research is to develop practical recommendations on how (public) spaces can not only be used, but actively shaped as caring spaces in order to strengthen solidarity, social inclusion, and care.
Course of action
The project follows a qualitative research approach to capture the working practices and experiences of awareness teams in depth. In phase 1 (January–May), seven semi-structured interviews will be conducted with volunteer and employed members of awareness teams in Switzerland. In phase 2 (June–September), we will carry out an ethnographic case study of the Buskers Festival in Bern. This will involve participant observation and shadowing in order to directly observe the interactions of awareness teams. Particular attention will be paid to the bodily dimensions of this work. This includes, for example, analyzing how embodied knowledge informs decision-making processes about whether intervention is required and how physical presence or spatial positioning can foster safety and inclusion. This combination of methods enables us to reconstruct both organizational work structures and subjective experiences and to analyze how they intersect. The results will be discussed in a workshop with experts (care professionals, security staff, event organizers, urban planners, etc.).
