Despite being an effective way to minimise risk, requiring a negative Covid test as a condition of entry hasn’t been widely adopted at local events. The group behind some of Auckland’s best parties hopes to change that.

Making the rave safer has always been central to the way Friendly Potential operates. 

For the last eight years, the DJ collective has created some of the most-highly regarded dance parties and festivals in Auckland, luring some of the world’s most iconic dance music acts to Aotearoa – names like electronic pioneer Richie Hawtin, Detroit treasure Marcellus Pittman, and Siberian techno queen Nina Kraviz – all while producing popular weekly radio shows on Auckland’s bFM and Dunedin’s Radio One. 

Their live events are also dependably some of the safest and most inclusive parties in the city. Since their inception, Friendly Potential have been known for their firm focus on safer spaces through a no compromise policy on violence or harassment.

“The most important thing at our shows is the music and the quality of that music,” says Friendly Potential’s Scarlett Lauren. “The quality of the experience is going to be hampered by someone feeling unsafe.”

And in the midst of the pandemic, the group has also had to grapple with how to make dance parties, an inherently high-risk environment for transmission, Covid-safe. 

Since the start of the year, the group has hosted three club nights. The latter of the two, at Auckland venues Galatos and Neck of the Woods, made negative rapid antigen tests (RATs) a condition of entry. They’re potentially the only high-profile local dance organisers with such a requirement.

London-based Friendly Potential member Tom McGuinness was the main driver behind the decision to require negative tests. “Obviously, the UK was a fucking mess with [Covid-19] for a long time,” he says. But that situation meant it became normal for negative tests as a condition of entry to clubs and events. After discussions, the group agreed to introduce the pre-testing system at their events, and despite initial concerns around logistics, they say so far it’s run smoothly.

So how does the system work? At the time of ticket sale, the terms and conditions state that a negative RAT, taken less than 48 hours prior to the event, will be needed on entry. Ahead of the event, the group sends emails and advertises on social media to remind people of the testing requirement. At the door, attendees show a time-stamped photo on their phone of their negative RAT beside their photo ID. If you end up testing positive and can’t attend, the group will refund your tickets. 

“This is the way it worked for a lot of clubs in London too,” McGuinness says. “It’s not foolproof, but it’s at least a harm minimisation.” There are plenty of ways attendees could cheat the system, but the group trusts the people who attend their shows to do the right thing. “With our crowd, and the values that we’ve instilled, we would like to think that people would be honest,” says Lauren.

Hours of dancing inside a subterranean space with hundreds of others poses a pretty real risk of Covid-19 transmission, so both McGuinness and Lauren view testing as a pragmatic means to mitigate that for themselves, their guests, their community and the artists they host. “These artists have had two years of no income,” says McGuinness, “so we don’t want them to come to our party at the start of an eight gig run, where they’re making their first income in months, and then suddenly they get sick and can’t play.”

At their first party with the testing as a condition of entry, one guest tested positive at the door. It underscored the importance of the requirement for the group. “This is why we do what we do, because we’d just prevented a person from entering our venue with Covid-19,” says Lauren.

They’re not worried about being the odd ones out on the scene with their mandatory testing. “It doesn’t really matter,” says Lauren. “We should be ahead of the game and that’s always transpired in a lot of our policies, we often do things slightly earlier than others, and other people tend to adopt them”. What they do hope is that by seeing a small and relatively underground group like themselves successfully manage the testing requirements, it might encourage other promoters and event organisers to do the same. 

Professor of public health at the University of Otago Michael Baker says that even with lower numbers of Covid-19 in the community, “if you’ve got a gathering of 100 people, you’ve got about a 40% chance that someone will have [Covid].” And the risk of transmission is heightened if the event is confined, crowded, and close contact, “which is pretty much the desired arrangement for social events,” he adds.

Knowing this, testing requirements are a helpful tool for club environments, especially if ventilation and masking are less viable options. Emphasising testing ahead of events is especially useful for two reasons, Baker explains. The first is that testing “reduces the probability that the people in the room are infectious”, and the second is that it “raises awareness that you shouldn’t go to things if you have symptoms”.

While we seem to be in a period of abating Covid-19 infections, likely due to temporary post-infection immunity, “the more that people do this, the more that we’ll keep a lid on transmission and we’ll keep numbers down,” he says. “That’s a service to people [going to the event] and it’s a service to the wider community.” 

Friendly Potential’s next dance party is in September, with three more planned for the rest of the year, and they plan to keep the testing requirements up. “It will be an interesting one, when it comes to festival season,” says McGuinness. Next year, in March, their open-air dance festival Beacon will return to the Auckland waterfront. Although McGuinness reckons they’ll still be able to manage with the thousands that turn up, their decision to continue testing will depend largely on “where New Zealand’s at with this stuff – it’s one of those things that we have to constantly reassess”.

“It’s really important to us that people feel comfortable,” says Lauren. Just as they’ve always done, the group is doing whatever they can to reduce harm and keep the focus on the music. “Life’s hard enough as it is, the least you can do is go to a party, and just dance your ass off, safe from bullshit as much as possible.”