#theo powers

But let’s pull the big kid pants on and give it a go.

I’m going to preface this by saying that I’ve been doing a fair amount of active work (though less lately) in the UK poetry and spoken word scene on safeguarding for something like ten years. I used that experience to help write safeguarding guidelines (based off the Edinburgh Horror Festival’s guidelines) for a couple of organisations. I’ve helped raise profiles of serial abusers, stalkers, and paedophiles to the consciousness of our community, as well as encouraging discussions about how and when to step in... instead of just applying Missing Stair principles. And I help maintain networks that work to ensure that the kind of person who turns up to poetry events and is T.R.A.S.H (transphobic, racist, ableist, sexist, and/ or homophobic... a non-exclusive list of cyst-like behaviour which also includes creeping on vulnerable people) is well-known among other promoters.

This has proved especially useful when we started running more and more events online, and problematic folk were no longer confined by geography. We have to be pretty hardline about that.

And I’ve also borne witness to a lot of people who, after telling me the nasty things they endured or encountered, decided not to go any further. They didn’t want to make a fuss, or get into trouble. And when I say “a lot”, even one is too many, but it’s a great deal more than that.

So this is all to say that, not only do I know what a variety of Unpleasant People look like in communities, but I also know which early warning signs blossom into more concerning behaviour. And yet still I’m generally minded to give people the benefit of the doubt.

So now we come to the crux of the matter: the fact that I’ve found myself increasingly involved in efforts to keep the audiodrama community (which is even more online, and even more likely to involve vulnerable – especially very young – people in unsupervised scenarios) safer. And the fact that we’ve recently come across someone who’s been very prone to making use of people (time, effort, talent, sympathy, patience) and then abandoning them. 

First of all, we thought that maybe Theo (as he was known then) was just brash, naïve, and a bit flaky. But the more we looked into it, after a couple of us started paying attention to our feelings of unease, the bigger the pattern got. And the more we asked, the more people we found had been hurt, from mild annoyance and inconvenience, to much deeper upset, or professional mistreatment.

We took our time, did our due diligence, talked to a LOT of people, gathered as much evidence as we could, and put what was safe to share (redacted where appropriate – which was a lot of places) into a surprisingly long dossier. You can see it here:

From beginners to full-time professional creators, from visual artists to composers to audio engineers to voice actors, from people in their forties all the way down to people in their early teens (the youngest person we’ve come across so far is apparently 13), the thing these folk have in common is someone known variously as Theodore (Theo) Powers, Vincent Whittman, Jack O’Constellations, Nigel, and (more recently): Frankie, v0xt3kk, and Tracey, to name a few.

We’re not telling anyone who reads this to do anything. We’re advising people to be wary about getting into new projects with him. And we’re advising him – if he chooses to read this – to engage with some key changes to his behaviour, in order to improve his professionalism... and thereby the experiences of the people around him.

Creating should be fun. It’s dangerous enough to pour your heart and soul out into creative output, let alone to share it, flirt with that heady risk of Being Perceived, so it’s important to proactively keep the environment in which you create as safe as possible. Collaborating should be fun. It’s dangerous enough to pour your heart and soul out into the hearts of other people, let alone to let them carry it in their hands and take responsibility for it coming to life, so it’s important to proactively keep the environment in which you collaborate as safe as possible.