Suwannee Hulaween, Photo by Lia Tabackman (@liashoots)
Music festivals across the globe have a striking problem with female artist representation.
Despite that more than half of music festival attendees are women, events of all genres in the United States and internationally continually book lineups where men make up the overwhelming majority of acts. In an April 2017 analysis by Pitchfork, reporters found that of 966 logged festival acts, only 14 percent were female.
Year after year, these numbers leave female-identifying artists and festival-goers continually asking themselves: where are the women?
The founders of Keychange, a new program from the UK’s PRS Foundation, are seeking to equalize artist representation across the industry by encouraging music festivals to achieve a 50:50 balance of male/female representation of their lineups by 2022.
The gender balance pledge comes as part of a proposal by Keychanges founding festival partners, including Reeperbahn Festival (Germany), BIME (Spain), Iceland Airwaves, Way Out West (Sweden), Musikcentrum Sweden, Tallinn Music Week (Estonia), MUTEK (Canada) and The Great Escape (UK).
45 festivals and music industry conferences in Europe, Canada, and the United States have since signed the pledge, including:
53 Degrees North (England), Aldeburgh Festival (England), Blissfields (England), Bluedot (England), Borealis (Norway), BreakOut West (Canada), By:Larm (Norway), Canadian Music Week (Canada), Cheltenham Jazz Festival (England), Cheltenham Music Festival (England), Eurosonic Noorderslag (Netherlands), FOCUS Wales (Wales), Granada Experience (Spain), Hard Working Class Heroes (Ireland), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (England), A2IM Indie Week (USA), BBC Music Introducing Stages (UK), Katowice JazzArt Festival (Poland), Kendal Calling (England), Liverpool International Music Festival (England), Liverpool Sound City (England), Manchester Jazz Festival (England), Midem (France), Norwich Sound and Vision (England), North By North East (Canada), NYC Winter Jazzfest (USA), Off The Record (England), Oslo World (Norway), Pop-Kultur (Germany), BBC Proms (England), Roundhouse Rising (England), Spitalfields Music (England), S?n (Wales), Trondheim Calling (Norway), Waves Vienna (Austria), Westway LAB (Portugal), Wide Days (Scotland), Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Festival (France)
“We have always aimed for a 50/50 gender balance with our music projects and wider work, and being a part of this great initiative holds us completely accountable to practice what we preach. We are extremely excited to be committing to Keychange moving forward and can’t wait to see the positive impacts it has upon our industry.” – Stewart Baxter, 53 Degrees North
Connect with Keychange:
https://www.facebook.com/KeychangeEU
https://twitter.com/keychangeeu
http://keychange.eu
Share On
