Practical note from the underground: Psychedelic care spaces
For more than a decade, ConsciousNest has been at the forefront of community-led harm reduction and psychedelic care within Queensland’s music-event landscape. Established in 2014 and sustained without government funding, ConsciousNest has evolved into one of Australia’s most recognised grassroots models for creating compassionate, safe, and evidence-informed care spaces at festivals and nightlife events. This presentation will explore the journey of developing and delivering these services—celebrating the milestones while candidly examining the challenges, barriers and lessons learned along the way.
Drawing from social work, critical feminist and post-modern frameworks, ConsciousNest was built on principles of peer support, trauma-informed practice, accessibility, creative engagement and community empowerment. The talk will outline how these frameworks have shaped the service’s approach to psychedelic distress support, emotional care, grounding techniques, and collaborative crowd-care strategies.
Brooke will discuss key highs—such as building statewide alliances, supporting festival communities through non-judgmental care, and witnessing policy shifts that have legitimised harm-reduction interventions—as well as the lows: navigating stigma, institutional resistance, burnout, high emotional labour, and the challenges of sustaining a service without stable funding.
The presentation will also unpack the practical barriers encountered in Queensland’s emerging psychedelic care landscape, including workforce development, training inconsistencies, gaps in event safety planning, and the complexities of integrating peer-led services within traditional emergency response systems.
Finally, Brooke will offer guidance for others seeking to create similar spaces, highlighting essential considerations such as building trust with event organisers, developing clear operating frameworks, fostering strong volunteer cultures, embedding cultural safety, collaborating with allied services, and advocating for supportive policy environments.
By reflecting openly on ConsciousNest’s evolution, this session aims to inspire, inform and equip practitioners, peers, event organisers and policymakers to strengthen care, compassion and harm-reduction infrastructures across Australia’s festival and nightlife communities.
