Meet the Club Inviting You to Text Them if You Need Them

Have you ever been at a club and had some leery stranger say something inappropriate to you? Or maybe you've glimpsed, in the crack between bathroom stalls, someone too drunk to take themselves home? Or maybe you just saw something you thought was off, something you couldn't explain? Scenarios like these are, unfortunately, inevitable going out. Pair drinking, drugs, late nights, and bunch of people together and things are bound to run less-than-smoothly some of the time.

This is why Melbourne-based club night and TV show Cool Room, has built a reputation on not only good times but also inclusive, safe and accountable times. They also execute some of the most incredible promotional shoots known to humankind. The organisers at Cool Room began being vocal and insistent about the importance placed on their events being a space for everyone at all times, and later introduced Kate Pern—and now Elly Scrine, too—as their Safety and Inclusivity Coordinators, and just recently announced their newest implementation, Cool Line.

Cool Line is the hotline making feedback, complaints and concerns as easy as a text. Cool Room have introduced the hotline as a means of making help and advice, via contact with club organisers, even more accessible than it was before.

This development is just another inventive step in a long line of moves making people accountable for their actions, so that over time, less bad behaviour happens as a result—much like the transparency of companies like Uber and AirBnB, where your feedback is as simple as the equivalent of a text. Encouraging customers to honestly express how situations have made them feel, which is often much easier when semi- or totally anonymous, creates a safer and more inclusive space—Cool Room's ultimate goal.

"All you need to do is save the number on your phone and then on the night, send us a text! The message will be instantly received by the whole Cool Room team and the most suitable person will reply to you," Pern tells THUMP. "You can message us with feedback, complaints, questions, if someone is making you feel uncomfortable, if you notice any bad behaviour, or anything else you might want to tell us."

The team says it was pretty simple to set up, and that when they heard Jess Hopper mention something similar working in the States during her Bigsound keynote address late year, they knew it was possible.

"As well as coming up with new, innovative ideas to make the night safer [like Cool Line], our next plan is to make the Cool Room team more visible on the night."

The Cool Room Season 2 trailer.

The next Cool Room is Friday June 17 in Melbourne.

Follow Cool Room on Facebook.