DENVER CONTACT JAM

Protocol for Responding to Harm

Denver Contact Jam, a program of Wiggelruhm. Version 1.1, adopted September 2026.

You are not expected to know this document. You are expected to know it exists, and to be able to find the part you need. Jam Support carries the short version on a card; the posters in the space carry what a participant needs. This is the reference behind both.

Start Here

Why This Protocol Exists

Denver Contact Jam is a space for Contact Improvisation, a movement practice that asks us into close physical contact, spontaneous negotiation, and genuine presence with one another. That contact is the gift of this form. It is also what makes harm possible.

When harm occurs, organizations often ask: who broke the rules, and how should they be punished? We ask different questions. Who was hurt, and what do they need? Is there a relationship in need of repair? How do we keep this from happening again?

This protocol exists not because we expect the worst, but because we want people who have been hurt to have somewhere to turn, people who have caused harm to have a path toward accountability and repair, and Jam Support to have shared language to lean on instead of improvising under pressure.

It does not promise perfect outcomes. It promises care, honesty, and a real attempt to hold harm as a community rather than leave individuals carrying it alone.

DCJ is a program of Wiggelruhm, and this protocol is grounded in Wiggelruhm’s values. We operate as volunteers, which means our work moves at the pace of care and sustainability rather than urgency. Moving at the speed of trust is not slowness; it is integrity.

This protocol applies to everyone: participants, Jam Support, teachers, musicians, and guests. No role exempts anyone from accountability, and no role makes accountability more punitive.

How We Approach Harm

Accountability is a care practice, not a control practice. It tends the health of the whole, which includes the person who caused harm. But care for the person who caused harm never comes at the expense of safety for the person harmed. The needs and sense of safety of the person harmed are the first weight on the scale at every stage.

We center those who were hurt. Our first questions are about impact, not intent.

We distinguish accountability from punishment. Naming that someone caused harm does not make them a bad person. People who cause harm may also have experienced harm; these are not mutually exclusive.

We expect conflict and prepare for it. Harm is inevitable wherever people gather, and Contact Improvisation is particularly intimate. Conflict is not a failure of the community. It is an invitation to practice our values.

We name power honestly. Racism, ableism, transphobia, sexism, and other forms of systemic oppression show up in our spaces. So do power dynamics specific to this community: the standing held by teachers, long-time practitioners, and people with social capital in the CI world. Harm is shaped by all of these, and we plan to meet it with that awareness.

We are honest about our capacity. Jam Support are volunteers, not professionals. We would rather promise less and deliver it than promise care we are not trained to give. Where someone needs more than we can offer, our job is to help them find it.

We work in progress. This protocol is imperfect and will need revision. There will always be more harm than can be fully addressed. We commit to learning and returning to this work.

We do not involve the criminal legal system. Jam Support will not initiate contact with police or criminal courts on behalf of the jam. In the rare case that someone refuses to leave and presents an immediate physical danger to people in the space, Jam Support may call for emergency assistance. Individuals always retain the right to pursue their own legal options.

The values this rests on

DCJ’s four values:

These are what we practice, not what we have perfected. We are volunteers, and we will fall short of them. Naming them is how we hold ourselves to them anyway.

Curiosity: Playfulness, wonder, and the creative unknown move us. We show up open to new perspectives, stretch our imagination, and let inspiration guide us.

Consent: We build trust in our shared experience by exercising our agency with consistency and care. We listen, stay grounded, and hold both ourselves and each other accountable with kindness.

Connection: We give more than we take through collaboration, solidarity, and service. We tend to people, places, and things, so we are all left better than we were found.

Collective: We continuously practice becoming together. Through education, adaptability, and presence, we build resilience so we can expand toward liberation and walk each other home.

DCJ is a program of Wiggelruhm, and Wiggelruhm’s values remain the ground beneath ours: Work in Progress · Embodiment First · Invitation, Not Prescription · Playfulness and Curiosity · Non-Extractive Economics · Stewardship Over Ownership · Accessibility & Care · Collective Becoming

Hurt and Harm

These words get used interchangeably. We hold them differently, because conflating them makes it harder to respond well to either.

Hurt is an uncomfortable or painful experience that can arise in the course of genuine engagement: from honest feedback delivered with care, from friction while working through conflict, from disappointment or unmet expectations. Hurt is real, it deserves care, and it is often part of growth. It does not by itself mean something has gone wrong.

Harm occurs when someone’s actions or inactions, regardless of intent, compromise another person’s safety, dignity, consent, trust, or ability to participate. Harm may be emotional, social, relational, physical, or structural. It often involves a misuse of role, a breach of boundaries or confidentiality, a pattern that targets or diminishes someone, or an action that removes a person’s agency. Structural dynamics like race, gender, ability, or role amplify it.

Harm is not defined solely by the experience of the person affected, nor solely by the intent of the person who caused it. It lives in the relationship between action, context, and impact.

Why this distinction matters. Our community has experienced confusion when someone asked to be accountable for harm reported feeling hurt by that request. The accountability process itself is not harm. We name this clearly so we can hold both experiences, attending to the person who feels hurt with care, while staying clear-eyed about whether harm occurred and what repair is needed.

A person asked not to return after a pattern of boundary violations may feel hurt, and that feeling is real and understandable. It does not mean the accountability process caused harm. Conversely, someone who causes physical pain accidentally during a dance, with no ill intent, may have caused harm even without wanting to.

When someone raises a concern, part of our response is to sit with this distinction together, openly and carefully, at the speed of trust.

Some examples of harm

Not exhaustive. Each instance calls for its own approach.

  • Transgressing physical or emotional boundaries during a dance, class, or gathering
  • Touching someone in an unwanted, sexual, or intimate way
  • Forcing, pressuring, or coercing someone into a lift, movement, or dance they did not want
  • Coercing participation by invalidating someone’s injury, capacity, or stated limits
  • Making demeaning comments about someone’s identity, body, or practice
  • Misgendering or deadnaming someone, particularly after being corrected
  • Harassing someone for romantic or sexual contact during, between, or after dances
  • Manipulating someone into intimacy under the pretense of teaching or healing
  • Sharing someone’s private feedback, personal information, or communications without consent
  • Failing as a teacher or facilitator to create an accessible, voluntary environment
  • A Jam Support member or teacher leveraging their role or reputation to avoid accountability
  • Exercising unilateral control over how conflict is allowed to be processed
  • Institutional practices that consistently exclude or marginalize certain participants
  • Denying someone their ability to give informed consent

Who Jam Support Is

Jam Support are the volunteer members of this community who hold the jam’s container: attending to the physical and relational space, carrying out this protocol, and integrating feedback over time.

We prevent harm mostly through presence: facilitating opening circles, welcoming people, modeling the Community Agreements, being available during the jam. Responding to harm is one part of the role.

Jam Support members are volunteers doing their best. They are not police, judges, therapists, investigators, or mediators. If a member’s response would be compromised by a conflict of interest or the limits of their capacity, they find another member or call outside support.

Membership is by invitation. Members may step back (“resting”) and return at any time without explanation. Only active members take reports, serve as Buddy, or count in decisions. Details in the Jam Support Handbook.

Terms used here

  • Reporter: Someone who tells us about harm. Often the person who experienced it, sometimes a witness or someone who was told.
  • Responder: The Jam Support member who receives the report and carries it.
  • Buddy: A second Jam Support member the Responder shares the substance with, for support and accountability.
  • Person harmed: The person whose safety, dignity, consent, trust, or ability to participate was compromised.
  • Person implicated in harm: Someone named by the Reporter as having caused harm through action or inaction.

How to Tell Us

Jam Support is a resource for anything from an interaction that felt slightly “off” to serious harm. You’re also welcome to talk directly with the person involved, or lean on a trusted friend. Not every situation needs us.

We encourage direct communication between people when that feels safe and appropriate, and raising a concern will never require you to confront the person you’re raising it about. Sometimes conflict needs community care.

You can:

That last one exists on purpose: it is a path that does not route through DCJ.

Concerns don’t need to be formal or complete to be taken seriously.

Three ways to report, and what each makes possible

Named. We can do everything in this protocol.

Anonymous but reachable. Use the form and leave a way to contact you. A burner email works, and you’re welcome to make one just for this. We won’t know who you are, and we can still support you through the whole process: follow-up, telling you where things landed, asking what you want. This is the option most people want and don’t know exists.

Fully anonymous, no contact. We take it seriously and it goes in our records, but we can’t ask questions, can’t tell you what happened, and can usually only respond with community-wide measures. Sometimes that’s exactly right. We’d just rather you know the tradeoff.

Tell us what you’re comfortable telling us. You don’t owe us a complete account to be taken seriously.

What we can and can’t offer

We will: listen without judgment, take you seriously, be clear about what happens with what you tell us, act when safety is at stake, and help you find real support.

We won’t: provide counseling, therapy, ongoing emotional support, mediation, or investigation. If you need those, we keep a Resource List. Ask any member or find it on the website.

This is a smaller promise than some communities make. It is one we can actually keep.

Asking Someone to Leave

Three distinct decisions. Confusing them is how one volunteer’s judgment call becomes a permanent exclusion nobody decided on.

1. Immediate removal: one person, no process, right now

Any Jam Support member may ask anyone to leave a jam, acting alone, without consulting anyone and without explaining themselves first. Effective immediately, for that session.

This exists because deliberation is not available in the moment. Someone escalating, someone intoxicated, someone refusing to stop after being asked, someone frightening the room. A person who has just been harmed should not have to wait for a meeting to feel safe.

No process required before. A record required after.

2. Pause pending conversation: automatic, temporary

After any immediate removal, the person doesn’t return until Jam Support has met and made contact. A hold, not a punishment or a finding.

The pause expires after four weeks if we haven’t acted. Nobody is left in limbo, and no volunteer carries an open obligation indefinitely.

3. A lasting boundary: the group decides

Conditions on participation, or asking someone not to return. Decided by active Jam Support together, following Deciding on Participation Boundaries below. The person is told what it is and why, unless telling them would put someone at risk.

The record

Within one week of an immediate removal, the member who acted writes down what happened and what they did, using the Conversation Record. Not a justification exercise. It exists so the group can pick up the thread and so patterns become visible.

Removals are reviewable by the rest of Jam Support, including concluding that one was wrong.

What Happens Next

A framework, not a rigid sequence. Shaped by the nature of the harm, the needs of those involved, and what repair actually requires.

Step 1: We acknowledge it

We respond directly and privately to the person who raised it. This is not a verdict. It signals that the concern was heard and something is beginning.

The Responder listens, asks questions without judgment, helps name needs and concerns, explains this protocol and its confidentiality limits, and confirms what will be shared and with whom. They ask whether the Reporter wants to name a person, which is not required.

The Reporter is kept informed at each stage, to the extent that’s appropriate and safe.

What “listening well” means here. Our members are trained to receive a report: to listen without judgment, to avoid treating inconsistency or emotional response as reason to doubt an account, to move at the Reporter’s pace, and to understand that harm shapes how people remember and describe what happened. We are not trained in trauma therapy or counseling, and it would be irresponsible to imply otherwise. The step-by-step guide is in the Handbook.

Step 2: A Buddy

The Responder shares the key substance with a second active member. The Reporter may request who. No names shared without the Reporter’s consent.

The Buddy hears it, helps the Responder think clearly, and makes sure nobody carries something alone. The Buddy is not a co-investigator and does not double the work.

If the two of them see significant risk of the same harm reaching others, the Responder consults the Reporter about addressing that risk while protecting their needs and, wherever possible, their anonymity.

Step 3: A conversation with the person implicated

If the person harmed requests it, or if we need it to understand what happened. This is not an interrogation. It’s a chance to name what occurred, connect it to our agreements, and invite reflection.

Four questions guide it:

  1. What happened?
  2. What was the impact?
  3. What do you understand about that impact?
  4. What do you think repair could look like?

We explain the protocol and confidentiality limits, share the experience of the person harmed with appropriate protection of identity, and name behaviors out of alignment with the Community Agreements.

We aim to help this person feel supported through it. In most cases we hope feedback and education are enough. This conversation begins the process; it does not resolve it, and it is not there to extract an apology.

Step 4: Context, if needed

We may seek more context: what preceded and followed, how each person understands it, what witnesses saw.

The priority is understanding and support, not investigation or evidence-gathering. We are not equipped to run investigations and do not attempt them.

Step 5: Next steps, together

We work with each party separately to determine what comes next, shaped by the nature of the harm, the needs of the person harmed, the accountability demonstrated, and what the jam needs structurally.

Step 6: Follow-up

We offer to check in periodically with everyone involved, a chance to reflect and reassess whether things have shifted.

Accountability takes time and we won’t rush it in the name of resolution. Premature closure is its own form of harm: declaring something resolved before it actually is.

Possible Outcomes

Guided by the needs of the person harmed, the needs of the community, and the response of the person implicated. The person harmed is consulted and informed of consequences to the extent they wish.

Responses are graduated and reversible wherever possible.

  • Reflection and acknowledgment: the minimum response to any harm, always
  • A statement of accountability, including commitment to specific behavior changes
  • A plan for learning and skill-building, supported by Jam Support
  • A relayed message that the person harmed doesn’t want contact or dance with the person who caused harm
  • A facilitated conversation between the parties, if the person harmed wants it and conditions for genuine repair exist
  • Structural changes to a role: added support, a co-facilitator, revised agreements
  • A temporary pause on attendance or on holding a role, while the process unfolds
  • Attending on different days
  • Stepping back from a facilitation role, temporarily or permanently
  • Conditions on participation: what someone can and can’t do at the jam
  • Being asked to stop attending the jam, where risk to others cannot otherwise be managed
  • A facilitated accountability process with multiple steps toward repair, which may or may not include the person harmed

The aim is repair and community safety, not removal as relief. Removal can short-circuit accountability by letting someone off the hook of genuine repair. It remains available, and it is not the first reach.

On our capacity. A facilitated accountability process is a serious undertaking, and we won’t always have the volunteer capacity to run one well. When we don’t, we’ll say so plainly rather than start something we can’t finish, and look at outside facilitation or a simpler outcome instead. An unfinished process serves no one.

Consequences, honestly

Consequence can keep its teeth without being punitive. Ours are natural, logical, and relational.

When trust is strained, the conditions that made a role possible no longer fully exist. Someone who has fractured trust, violated confidentiality, or overridden a stated boundary has, through their own actions, changed what their role can hold right now. Pausing a role is not punishment. It is an honest recalibration with what is true.

What Each Person Can Expect

If you have been harmed

You will not be asked to carry the process. You will not be required to confront the person who harmed you before you’re ready, or at all.

Your needs and your sense of safety are the first weight on the scale at every stage.

You’ll be consulted about and informed of any consequences, to the extent you want. You have the right to disengage from any part of this at any time. If you hold a role at the jam, we take additional responsibility for making sure the process doesn’t compromise your ability to hold it.

If you have caused harm

Discovering you’ve caused harm can be painful and disorienting. We hold space for that. We also hold the expectation that harm asks something of the person who caused it.

You will be engaged with honesty and care, not punished, not shamed, not written off. You’ll get a real opportunity to understand the impact, reflect, and take part in repair. What’s asked of you is not perfection. It’s presence, honesty, and a willingness to reckon with what happened.

Any accountability process is voluntary and you have the right to disengage. If you do, we may ask you to pause attendance until there’s sufficient resolution. If you return and don’t follow through on agreements made, we may ask you to stop attending. You may ask us to revisit any lasting boundary after one year.

On apologies

Apologies can be a meaningful part of repair. If someone wants to give or receive one, we’ll convey the request and, with consent on both sides, help facilitate it.

We may ask someone who caused harm to name their actions and their impact. We will not require an expression of regret. Forced apologies diminish meaning for everyone.

A genuine apology names the harm, names the impact, takes responsibility by naming your actions, and commits to not repeating it. Use I-statements. Say “I’m sorry.”

Adapted from Mia Mingus, “How To Give A Genuine Apology Part 2.”

When Harm Comes from Inside the House

Some of the most complex harm in a community space is harm caused or enabled by the people holding the space: Jam Support, teachers, or others in roles of trust and visibility. When harm comes from inside the house, the ordinary move of turning to leadership for support may not be available to the person harmed.

We name this explicitly because it has happened in our community and in communities we learn from. Not to create distrust of Jam Support, but to hold ourselves to a higher standard precisely because we hold more power.

In practice:

  • A Jam Support member implicated in harm recuses themselves from every Jam Support conversation about it, up to and including pausing attendance and/or stepping back from the role.
  • The remaining active members hold the response.
  • A person harmed by a Jam Support member has the same pathways described here, including anonymous reporting. The Wiggelruhm channel exists partly for this.
  • Harm caused by a Jam Support member may affect the whole community, not just the person directly involved. A community conversation may be warranted.
  • Jam Support members are also members of this community. If one causes harm, they deserve a fair, honest process. Not protection from accountability, and not a harsher one either.

This section reflects a hard-won lesson from communities before us, including Chicago Contact Jam, whose governance opened up after grappling with a similar challenge. Collective governance and shared accountability aren’t only organizational structures; they are proactive, protective supports for healthy relations.

When to call for outside support

DCJ is small. The recusal rule can leave very few uninvolved people, and sometimes none. That is not a flaw to work around. It is exactly when to call outside.

Call outside support when:

  • All or most of Jam Support is implicated
  • Fewer than two uninvolved active members remain
  • The situation involves someone with significant power or standing and internal handling would not be credible
  • Jam Support cannot reach consensus on a participation boundary
  • Anyone involved asks for it and it’s feasible

When any of these is true, we reach out for outside support rather than pushing through internally. Options include the Spring Up Collective, AORTA Cooperative, a local facilitator, or Wiggelruhm.

Reaching outside is not an admission of failure. It is what the protocol asks for when the situation is bigger than the people available to hold it.

When harm comes from an institutional practice

If harm results from a DCJ practice or process, it goes to Jam Support first. Where it touches the venue, money, or Wiggelruhm programming, we have a conversation with Wiggelruhm.

Deciding on Participation Boundaries

When harm results from misalignment with the Community Agreements, Jam Support may determine how the person may participate going forward. We consider:

  • The stated needs of the person(s) harmed
  • Demonstrated ability to align with the Community Agreements
  • Commitment to future change
  • Whether they remain in a position where they could cause that harm again

All matter. We give most weight to the risk of that harm happening again.

Decided by consensus among active members, excluding anyone implicated. If consensus can’t be reached, we call a community conversation or seek outside mediation.

A boundary decision should be reached within four weeks of a pause beginning. If we can’t, the pause lifts and the conversation continues with the person attending.

Patterns from elsewhere

A pattern of harmful behavior in this community or another may ground a boundary here even without an incident at our jam. We may also set one indefinitely when we lack capacity for ongoing monitoring or support.

When we do: the decision is made by active Jam Support together, never by one person; the person is told unless telling them would put someone at risk; and they may ask us to revisit after one year.

Confidentiality

  • The Responder shares the substance with a Buddy. No names without the Reporter’s consent at this step.
  • If significant risk to others emerges, the Responder may need to share more broadly, and will consult the Reporter first about how to protect their needs while addressing the risk.
  • If the Reporter named someone, that name may be shared with other active members when patterns have emerged across reports, or when a response is already underway.
  • If you want a guarantee that someone’s identity stays private, don’t name them in your report. We’ll still work with you within those limits.
  • Where multiple people experienced similar harm from the same person, outcomes from one case may be shared with others as confidentiality allows.
  • If you need to process something that truly cannot be shared, we encourage a trusted friend or someone on the Resource List.

Organizational honesty without compromising individual privacy. When a process is underway, the community may be told that a process is happening and what we’re learning structurally, even when personal details stay private. This reflects our value of Collective: we grow together, including through how we handle harm.

Closing a Case

Every report gets a close-out, even if the close-out is “no further action needed.” Closing means:

  • The Reporter knows where it landed, to the extent they wanted to know
  • Any agreed next steps have owners and dates, or are done
  • Responder and Buddy agree nothing further is being carried
  • It’s noted in the Jam Support log

Open-ended obligations are what burn volunteers out. A case quietly never closed is a weight someone carries indefinitely. If a case can’t be closed, that itself goes to the monthly meeting.

Jam Support members are encouraged, though not required, to debrief with each other after difficult cases.

Community Conversations

We may bring harm into a community conversation when:

  • It had a collectively felt impact, witnessed by many people in the space
  • It appears to be part of a larger pattern
  • There are complex or competing needs in the community
  • Feedback is needed about Jam Support’s own actions, or about how a process was handled

Community conversations will be facilitated carefully and will not require the person harmed to be present or named.

Harm Outside the Community Agreements

Where there is no clear misalignment with Wiggelruhm’s values and DCJ’s Community Agreements, Jam Support may help people think through options or convey messages between parties, but may not enforce a boundary on behalf of the jam. The values and Community Agreements are the foundation our accountability processes operate from. Each situation is assessed on its own terms.

How This Document Changes

Anyone can propose a change. Talk to Jam Support or email us. Proposed changes are posted publicly at least four weeks before they’re decided. Active Jam Support decides after the comment period.

This is a living document. It will grow and change as we do. Bring questions, reflections, and proposed revisions any time. We grow this together.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the people who have borne the burden of harm alone, before adequate community structures existed to help shoulder it.

This protocol was inspired by the Chicago Contact Improv Sunday Jam, developed in dialogue with and deep gratitude toward its Jam Support members, who shared years of learning with us. We thank Sarah Schaffer in particular, who freely gave an immense amount of effort to steward their transition into Collective Governance. It draws on Transformative Justice and the work of the Spring Up Collective and AORTA Cooperative. The apology framework is adapted from Mia Mingus.

Feedback and questions are always welcome.

Related: Community Agreements · Jam Support Handbook · Resource List

Version 1.1, adopted September 2026 by Denver Contact Jam Support

Revision history

v1.1, September 2026. Values revision. Adds a framing line above the four values naming that these are practiced rather than perfected, and that we are volunteers who will fall short of them. Tightens Curiosity and Collective so each value reads as an actionable norm rather than an aspiration.

v1.0, August 2026. Adopted. Merges the 06/22/2026 draft with a shortened revision contributed by a Jam Support member, whose language shaped the Consequences, honestly section, the “reflection and acknowledgment” floor, the four questions in Step 3, the If you have been harmed / If you have caused harm structure, and much else throughout. Adds the three-tier removal framework, honest capacity limits, case close-outs, four-week clocks, and the three ways to report. Sets the law-enforcement position and DCJ’s four values.