ABSTRACT
Each year Calgary, Alberta, Canada, hosts a ten-day festival touted as “the greatest outdoor show on earth”. The Calgary Stampede hosts over a million people each July and temporarily transforms not only the festival grounds but also most of the surrounding city as businesses and neighbourhoods host Stampede parties. As a celebration of Western heritage and culture, some aspects of the annual celebration have led to a culture normalising sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence. Hoping to raise awareness and redress such problematic behaviours, a group of grassroots activists launched the #SafeStampede campaign in 2015. This research examines #SafeStampede culture and practices. By combining social movement theories with mediation of communication theories, this research finds that by strategically pairing grassroots organisers with formal organisations, activists were able to assert feminist claims, contend with controversies, place gender-based violence on the agenda of Stampede organisers, gain governmental endorsement and financial support and intervene on a practical level with bystander intervention training for festival and bar staff.
