Cultural democracy means that everyone’s story is important - socially, legally and culturally. It’s about how to fund government and community advocacy programs to include more storytelling, but most importantly, more truth-telling in meaningful ways. Cultural democracy is not about what is popular or trending or limited to how the arts or media are funded. It’s about community representation and how to best take care of our representational work as artists, writers, academics, community organisations and journalists.

Jack provides a range of strategic services, coaching, tools and training for artists, academics, activists and journalists to prevent or mitigate the risk of strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) without compromising the integrity of their work. Practical services include:

1. Artistic script/work assessment for political material and in development support. Support to maintain your voice and messaging and keep *political messaging sharp without resorting to vilification, hate speech or “punching down”. This is not a sensitivity read but is related to preserving *Article 19 human rights to freedom of expression without resorting to vilification, hate speech, or what is often called 'punching down'. The fact is, we need more lived experience work out there; boldly, confidently, and I aim to support you do that without flinching.

2. Development of customised trauma-informed templates for festivals, grants applications and marketing. These include methods and scripts for addressing systemic policing of artistic expression in keeping with the principles of cultural democracy. These include (but are not limited to) content warning statements, performer and audience trauma-informed care strategies, and communication templates. I’ll work with you to distill key talking points to resist representational policing of your work.

3. Risk and safety planning. Practical guidance to developing critical messaging while keeping the artistic/representational merit of work intact. The provision of clear, frank and fearless, evidence-based support on determining risk and mitigation for representational resistance. This is achieved through harnessing **lived expertise as expertise and centring progressive political messages, with confidence and clarity (without it being the trauma porn of old).

4. Group facilitation and rehearsal support. Using deep democracy methods, Jack can support your organisation or production team during the development of co-production, rehearsals with content testing and group dispute management.

*Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - focusing on how this relates to lived experience or expertise: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” This is not legal advice, but support in developing strategies and an evidence base to support any future legal challenge. Rather than being reactive, this preventative work aimed at preserving political communication as vital to democracy.

**Lived experience is centred. I do not use AI in my work. I understand AI can be an accessibility measure. I support any client's use of critical literacy support tools and training to assess the accuracy and efficacy of their use.