- What the programme actually is
One DJ volunteering their time to help another one get better, arranged through this site. That's the whole of it. A mentor isn't our employee, our contractor, or our agent, and being paired doesn't make either of you the other's boss.
Nobody's being paid, nobody's being managed, and neither of you speaks for Atherly's After Dark. We introduce two people who both said yes. What happens after that is between the two of you.
- What it doesn't promise
- A booking, a place in the top 8, a place on a lineup, a soft landing with the judges, or a result of any kind. Mentors have no say in judging, no say in the running order, and no say in who gets registered, and having a mentor is worth nothing to your score. If a mentor tells you otherwise, that's them talking and not us, and we'd want to hear about it.
- Signing up, either side
Being an apprentice is instant: fill in the form and you're in, no audition and no queue. What you write there (your goals, your level, your genres) is shown to any mentor you send a request to, and your genres show on your Registry card if you're listed.
Your goals and your level aren't printed on your public profile, but write them like they can be read.
A mentor application is the other way round: a person on the event team reads it and decides, because the site is vouching for you to DJs who are brand new.
We can say no without explaining why. A no doesn't touch your account or your entries, and you can apply again. A yes puts your bio and your genres in public.
- A request you've sent, before anyone accepts it
A request sits pending until the mentor accepts it or turns it down, and any request still waiting on an answer is listed on My Account, so you can see what's outstanding.
You can withdraw a pending one from there. It asks you to confirm, and no reason is needed. None of the public part of a pairing starts until a mentor accepts: the credit, the branch on the Legacy Tree and the News item all begin at that moment, so a request you pull back before then leaves none of them behind.
- Either of you can end it, any time
No notice, no reason needed, no penalty: either side taps it and the pairing is over for both. A mentor can also step back from mentoring altogether, from their own dashboard: that takes them off the Registry and stops new requests reaching them.
It's their call alone. We don't do it for them, and it doesn't touch a single existing pairing. Ending is also what frees an apprentice to go and find someone else.
Everything already said in the thread stays readable to both of you afterwards: the messages and the uploads both.
Ending makes the thread read-only for both of you: the server refuses new messages and new uploads from either side, not just the page hiding the box; it doesn't wipe it, and nothing in there is deleted later on either.
- Retiring as a mentor
An approved mentor can step out of the programme whenever they want, from their own mentor dashboard. It asks you to confirm, and then it's done. Retiring is your own control, not ours.
There's no button at our end that does it for you, and you don't have to email anyone to arrange it.
Retiring takes you off the DJ Registry and stops new requests reaching you.
It doesn't destroy anything on the way out: the apprentices you have and the ones you've had keep their threads, every pairing stays on the Legacy Tree, and the credits are permanent, same as they always were.
Your listing switch on My Account goes back to being the thing that decides whether you show up in the Registry. And you can apply to mentor again later. Retiring isn't a door locking behind you.
- What's permanent, and what's public
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- The moment a mentor accepts a request, the pairing becomes a public, permanent credit: "Mentored by" on one profile, "Has mentored" on the other, and a branch on the Legacy Tree.
- Ending the mentorship doesn't remove any of that. It is shown as past instead of current. It happened, so it stays.
- The Legacy Tree shows your artist name and photo once you've been in a pairing whether or not you're listed in the DJ Registry. It isn't the only thing that switch doesn't reach: an approved mentor's profile stays public regardless of it, and the counterpart's page names you as their mentor or apprentice either way, so treat accepting a match as a decision to be named in public.
- Accepting also publishes a short item on the site's News feed naming both DJs and carrying the mentee's photo. It goes up on its own, neither of you is asked first, and the only way to not have one is to not accept.
- What happens in the thread
A mentorship runs in a private one-to-one thread here: messages, and MP3s the apprentice uploads for feedback. No other user can read a word of the messages. We don't read them as routine, they're deliberately kept out of the spreadsheet copy of the programme, and there's no tool here that surfaces them, but we do run the servers they sit on, so treat the thread as private from other people rather than private from us.
The audio works differently, and you should know how: an upload is stored at a long unguessable link that is never listed, indexed, or shown anywhere public, but anyone handed that link can play it with no account and no part in the pairing.
It's unlisted, not locked, so don't pass the link on.
That privacy isn't a free pass: the Fair Play conduct standard applies inside a private thread exactly as it does on a public page, and "nobody was watching" is not a defense.
Don't ask an apprentice for money. Don't push the conversation off this site onto somewhere you can't be held to any of this. Don't send anything you wouldn't want read back to you.
- If something goes wrong in there
Either side can report a concern from inside the thread: a plain text box, no category to pick, write it however it comes out. It goes straight to the event team, privately, and nothing is shared with the other person.
Reporting doesn't end the pairing on its own; that's still your own tap. We read every report and we keep it. Depending on what's in it we might just have a conversation, or we might take a mentor off the roster and close their account by hand.
If it's a safety matter that reaches past this website, go to the proper authorities first and tell us second. We're an event, not an emergency service. You can also email jarrydiatherly@gmail.com directly if you'd rather not use the box.
- Automatic emails
- If a pairing goes quiet for two weeks, the site emails both of you once to say so. It doesn't keep nagging. The next message in the thread is what sets the clock again. That's part of running the programme rather than marketing, so the unsubscribe link on our broadcast emails doesn't cover it, and ending the mentorship stops it entirely.
