Evaluating Capacity for Adequate Safeguarding of Minors at Celtic Burn

These are documents summarising discussions within the community recently (thanks Zoe!)

Thanks so much for posting this, Madeleine. I agree that if we want to be intentional about our legal and ethical presence as a community, it's a binary choice: sort out our child safeguarding properly and welcome kids; or don't have them at CB. We have seen that half-measures (or none at all) lead to discomfort and edgy experiences all round, and to be honest we have been lucky so far. To protect minors and also to protect our community, there's no real middle ground on this.

As a former primary school teacher, lifeguard, and first-aid lead - safeguarding involves thinking up the worst-case scenarios and then assessing whether there are measures in place to prevent or manage them. So this conversation no doubt seems quite dramatic to some, and they may be thinking: "what a mountain out of a molehill, nothing really bad has even happened, all this is so exaggerated; can't we just trust that the people in our community have common sense?" But by that logic, events like Titanic, Chernobyl, and the Hindenburg should never happen. I choose those 3 because they were all in part caused by failure to predict and plan for worst-case scenarios, and we talk now about how silly the people involved in all 3 of them were, not to think about what COULD happen. This is hyperbole to make a point, obviously. But the fact remains that discussing and planning for worst-case scenarios in our community IS common sense. We'd be naive and idealistic not to.

As for my personal feelings about kids at the burn, if it were only about myself alone, I would honestly rather not. Certainly not U-12s, preferably not U-16s. I can't fully relax with kids around; the teacher instincts kick in and I'm out of free-spirit mode and into vigilant-alert mode. It's not a choice; I would turn it off if I could. I do not want to have any kind of active role in safeguarding or caring for kids - it would throw me into "responsible carer" mode for the duration of a once-a-year event when I'm trying to shed those hats and just flow. HOWEVER, I'm fully aware that's a purely selfish perspective, and I don't think I have the right to ban kids and families from the burn just because I prefer it. This community is strengthened by its diversity. So I'll just say that if we do decide to create policy for kids safely attending the burn, I hope it's watertight enough to enable us to relax, and leaves some areas reliably kid-free for when we need refuge.

A good policy should make us feel more able to relax and have fun, not less: at ease in the knowledge that the hard stuff has already been thought about and planned for. I'm strongly against continuing with no policies in place, or leaving it entirely up to individual parents to manage their kids, rather than growing a responsible and risk-aware community that we can feel respect for.

I feel obliged to comment as a parent of two girls , now 18 and almost 16

Sometimes a story helps make a point, so here’s what springs to mind for me.

I used to have a favourite bar, the Oyster Bar in Leith’s Shore area. I went there several times a week, had my supper there for several years , knew the barman, spent lots of money there getting drunk till very late.

When my wife and I had kids we went there with our first baby and were confined to using the bit right at back, next to the toilets (that smelled of toilet cleaner badly) and had to leave early. We stopped going there forever. Other local bars had similarly restrictive policies so we stopped going to them all. For years . Maybe it’s different now - the OysterBar has long since changed its name, management and I’m no longer “30 something”.

What’s my point in telling this story?

What I resented the most at the time was that I could no longer carry on doing what I wanted to do, in the way that I used to. We could have continued to go out somewhere “safe for kids” like a Brewers Fayre - for a family evening out surrounded by other parents , booster seats and a mini ball pool. We wanted to carry on like before we had kids, but we couldn’t, that time had passed (for a long time) and we had to just “suck it up”- our decision for having kids.

Taking kids to a ‘piss-up’ / drinking session in a dive bar in Leith would be highly inadvisable for the child( even if the barman let us in ) and would be guaranteed to spoil someone else’s evening as well.

We need to be honest about what the Celtic Burn is about, what goes on, what it might become. I avoided several of the yurts and activities that went on between consenting adults, yet was still aware there were people naked , some high af on Class A’s , some pretty annoyingly drunk, wandering about the site from breakfast time til after 2am. And hilarious and lovely as many of those people were, they should not be doing that with minors present. No way whatsoever. Maybe that’s acceptable elsewhere in the world, but it isn’t in Dumfries I suspect.

So either the Celtic Burn needs to be explicitly the Leith Oyster Bar or Brewers Fayre .

I miss the Oyster Bar, I’d like to go there one week a year and pretend I’m still ‘30 something’ - I’ve waited long enough.

@Roo Benn  the difference is Reuben that you weren't a burner when you were 30.
As a community, we have the ability to create the Oyster Fayre.

I don’t have kids to put across a personal view but here is my tuppence. The first year CB ran there was several kids from 1-13 years old aprox. This tied with the lack of s+ space meant that safeguards came very naturally. I do believe that we need some minor safeguards in place to clearly designate s+ and events not suitable for under 18s. I strongly strongly disagree that CB should become an adult event. Over 18 parties and events exist and the thing that separates CB from them is community. By banning kids we also ban parents and both of them in my opinion make our community what it is today. I have also witnessed real benefits for the kids being allowed to thrive in the community and by banning that goes against at least my opinion of what we are all about.

Having been wrapped up in a safeguarding issue at a burn recently because of a parent treating the burn as free child care. Which affected a LOT of people. I'm enormously tentative of encouragingly welcoming parents with children without first ensuring the parents/guardians understand their responsibilities.

At CB last year I witnessed a child spanking someone they didn't know as they got out of the hot tub. I've personally had to find parents for crying children who have just been left with a phone number written on their arm.

Any presence of a child immediately affects everyone around them's experience as some of the freedoms and self expression we are used to are suddenly being witnessed by a child's eyes or by parents who expect our behaviours to change. I don't even mean s+ things. Suddenly nudity and simply swearing suddenly becomes a point of contention.

I don't feel excluding children is the answer. But putting the onus on parents that it is they that should be changing their behaviours to ensure their child has the experience they want them to. While not affecting others.

I have a lot of input here:

Should kids be exposed to adult stuff at all?

Whilst I highly value the idea that children dont always need to be wrapped in cotton wool, I also know that being exposed to certain risky and adult things when I was a kid may have seemed great when I was in my twenties but now I'm my forties and finally getting proper therapy, have realised damaged me in more ways than I saw in the past. So my opinion on how much children should be exposed to the various aspects of burns is a complicated and conflicted one which is unresolved. This is also one of the reasons why I don't have kids of my own.

Unfortunately I've seen many things go wrong with regard to children at burns, and both the general knowledge of the legal and moral risks compounded by my experience leaves me feeling uncomfortable whenever this comes up or I see someone I suspect of being under 18 in the same space as me.

Claim: The parents will supervise them/arrange supervision.

I've never seen this work even vaguely close to 100% at regionals (and I've been to a lot around the world over ten years) although I've not seen any unattended kids at BM itself but it's so big they would get lost in seconds.

I've had kids as young as 7 walk into my dangerous workshop with a 10 years old 'keeping an eye on them' , past the no under 18's signs. And similar things enough times to know that parents at burns don't keep an eye on their kids enough for this to be a main part of a protection plan. Based on my observations we have to plan for them to be free roaming whatever the parents click 'i agree' to before hand and regardless of maps and signage. For maps and signage to work this would have to be heavily policed, including taking the child back to the parents at each breach and being prepared to evict them from site, not just discouraging them away (which is all I've ever seen done about it and resulted in incidents listed below). Without a team of people willing to police this, conformity will be low.

Risk to adults?

Unfortunately due to the legal and moral panic tendancy in the UK around children, everyone present at a burn with u18 faces a whole range of new risks when compared to one without. This is compounded by not knowing the opinions of the parent in a situation. Eg a kid could tell you what they are doing is fine and there parents would be cool with it, so you carry on, later to find out the parents are devastated and try and attack you for it or get you prosecuted. Where as another parent may say the activity your talking about is exactly what they wanted there kids exposed too and thank you. It's impossible to tell when the adult making the moral judgements isn't present at the time. I've experienced both myself over relatively benign and risky activities (IMHO)

I've had a kid, who's parents I knew fairly well, tell people that there parents tell them all about drugs and it's fine and ask questions about certain drugs, but I know for certain they made all this up to trick adults into having adult conversations with them that they would not have allowed at home. In this case I stepped in and reminded them I was there and basically would grass them up to their parents... I wasn't even the one talking to the kid but as I over heard part of it, had to intervene. This is part of why I feel I need to switch to a different mode whenever they are in my space, which is draining when it's not what I want to do with my day. It's also really hard to convince parents your space isn't for kids if it's not cleary an adult space. But even just providing somewhere to sit can escalate rapidly as in this example.

I've had a kid pull out a pocket knife before and wave it around and make jokes about stabbing things (not people) and I've no idea if the parent gave them the knife and it's a wholesome outdoors person type situation or if they just swiped it from a camp and is super risky and I need to get it off them. In the end they cut my trampoline with it destroying it. They then lied to their parent and told them they never went on the trampoline that day and only showed me the knife safely...

I've found kids hiding behind a marquee listening in to workshops without people inside knowing. the kid was later repeating what they heard about fisting to a bunch of adults, who all just shuffled away, no one knew what to do or say at that point...the kid did not say that they heard it by spying, they just said some adults from the X camp told them... Fortunately as I had caught them doing this I had informed the people in the workshop they had been listened in on so they could explain this to the parent who turned up fuming. Another close call which ruined many people's day and put an idea in a kids head way to early. If kids are allowed to roam free in a space where adult workshops are happening, I'm not sure how else to prevent this, I only found them by chance as I was following the path of a power cable round the back of the marquee, they couldn't be seen otherwise

Kids can pass as adults

A few years ago we had a very worrying incident at a burn while I was on site lead shift. A 15 year old (who looked older) was given alcohol , (maybe more) and was found crying and distressed making accusations of sexual assault by an 18 year old. When the 18 year old was told the accuser was 15 theyt actually went into shock and I can understand why. All of us awake at the time (3am) saw them kissing and cuddling around the fire earlier and had no idea there was a minor present. Fortunately in this case charges where not brought, but that would have been a VERY difficult situation. I didn't do the follow up for this so not sure how it ended but needless to say we avoided headlines.

Due to the types of risk i see that people who host spaces/run workshops/do performance etc and site lead, rangers etc. face a much more difficult situation when it comes to kids. so although I see lots of general support for kids to attend, I think a final decision needs to be weighed to the opinions of those groups more as they are the most effected. If we can't recruit site lead because of risk placed on them based on how the law/moral panic would see their responsibility (regardless of what we say it is), the event can't go ahead so the opinions of the rest of the members are kind of not so useful in that scenario.

The issues I mentioned above are one of the reasons I don't do site lead anymore. It puts me off running theme camps too, as the incidents involving kids have actually been some of the hardest incidents I've been involved in.

@Tom Allen At our own CB24 this year, I had to shepherd a young person to the wellfare tent because they'd had too much of something and were struggling to handle it. I'm not sure what their actual age was, but at first I thought they might be in their twenties, and later realised they were much younger; I believe in their teens. I didn't think too hard about it at the time - it took me a while to process with everything else going on that week - and I'm not even sure who the young person was and would not want to embarrass them or their family inadvertently. They were ok. (I was not on duty as a wellfairy at the time so I don't consider sharing this to be a breach of confidentiality) But yeah, the scenarios you speak of are not hypothetical - they have literally happened, and not just in other communities or a long time ago: in ours and recently.

There was only one child at CB24 - Kieran T's son, who is 5 years old, and that too was only in the last 2 days of the burn. So, unless I'm grossly misinformed, the human you encountered was not a minor.