My Big Fat Festival Gender Audit

London sunset over British Summer Time Festival, 13th July 2019

Regular readers of this blog will remember that, back in summer 2017, I got a bit obsessed with the whole issue of women and music festivals.

Not so much the issue of women and safety at music festivals (although, alas, that issue is always with us... including this summer) but with how few women get to headline, or play at all, at music festivals in the UK.

It all started with a very detailed investigative report that the BBC did into the lack of female festival headliners, and some cockwomble esque comments made a pundit on the BBC World Service in response to the reports findings.

I had a pretty intense time writing my response to the report for The F-Word, and I had a hard time letting the issue go afterwards. I just couldn't stop writing about it.

I think the comments that really stung were the ones suggesting that there simply aren't any women with a high enough profile to headline Glastonbury, which I still reckon is bollocks. Admittedly, Glastonbury currently has a crowd capacity of 203,000 people, but I think that may be part of the problem: It takes a special kind of festival to book both Kylie Minogue and Janet Jackson to play in 2019 and not have either of them headline the event.

This summer I decided that I wanted to re-visit the whole issue of women and music festivals. Not just women headliners, but - again - how many women get to play UK music festivals at all in comparison to men.

In short, I did a gender audit of 10 UK music festivals of varying sizes.

I will be publishing a piece next week which will explore my findings in more depth but, if you want to see the headline stats, you can read them in Sticks 'N' Strings issue 4, which will land in your inbox on Saturday morning. If you haven't already signed up and would like to, you can do so here.

On leaving The F-Word (again...)

Phones and fans, Florence + The Machine, British Summer Time, Hyde Park, 13th July

Back in February I made the decision to resign my music editor post at The F-Word.

On the one hand, this wasn't a difficult decision to make because the post is unpaid; everyone involved with The F-Word is a volunteer. But, on the other hand, I knew that I would miss the camaraderie of my fellow editors and writers at the site.

I originally worked as one of two music editors, alongside Holly Combe, between 2011 and 2013. I was then approached in 2017 in a solo capacity and asked to take on the role again but only for 12 months while the existing music editor took her turn as rotating editor. When she elected, after the twelve months, not to return to the role I was then asked if I wanted to continue on a permanent basis. I agreed but, even at the time, I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to commit for. My life was in something of a state of flux at the time so I didn't feel like I could make any long term guarantees.

The reasons I chose to resign (my actual resignation coming in May) were, essentially, because I felt as though I'd taken the role as far as I could. Because we are a site run by volunteers, and we don't pay our writers, attracting contributors can be something of a challenge. As a writer seeking paid work, I sympathise with writers who wouldn't want to write for the site as I've turned down unpaid work myself. From the editors perspective, it did mean that I was very reliant on my two regular contributors and on my own initiative. And this state of affairs did lead me to conclude, after a while, that what we really needed was new blood.

I re-vamped a few aspects of the music section while working at The F-Word this time, specifically, I introduced a monthly roundup blog post of interesting music news. The theatre section at the site has been running their own monthly roundup post for some time, and it seemed both useful and popular and, as such, something worth replicating for the music section. Due to the situation I outlined in the previous paragraph, it simply isn't possible for us to cover everything relevant to a feminist website that's happening in music land, so a monthly roundup seemed a good way to address those events and releases we were unable to cover in any other capacity.

Over time though, I began to really enjoy doing the monthly roundup post. I was also reading a lot of newsletters and, eventually, I hit on the idea of creating my own newsletter for and about women and the live music industry in the UK.

Hatchie fans, watching Hatchie, Yes, Manchester, June 2019

In another universe, I would have started a newsletter much, much earlier. Going back to 2002, when I created the first issue of my faction fanzine Harlot's Progress, I would have really liked to have done it as an email newsletter, not a fanzine. It seemed so suited to that format. Unfortunately, in 2002 newsletters weren't so much of 'a thing' and the software needed to create one was a lot clunkier than it is today, so it basically felt like a non starter.

Doing a newsletter in 2019 feels like I am going back to my DIY fanzine writer routes though. It feels outsider-y and slightly renegade, a lone wolf corresponding with anyone who cares to listen. Yes, I could one day monetise this venture by using tools and platforms such as Ko Fi and Patreon, but that's not going to happen anytime soon, if at all.

I released my first issue of the Sticks 'N' Strings newsletter in May. I deliberately chose to focus on women and the live music aspect of the music industry because this feels like the battleground for a lot of what women are facing at the moment, both as performers and as fans. You can read more about my reasons for starting the newsletter in an earlier blog post.

From a personal perspective, the newsletter gives me the freedom and space to write about issues that I find relevant and interesting as a music journalist, fan and gig attendee. I can write what I want in an organised but ultimately creatively unlimited way, I can publish it when I'm good and ready, and I don't have to waste hours trying to define a new and nebulous topic for the benefits of a series of editors who won't read my pitch emails anyway or, if they do, won't take a punt on the idea, or on me as a writer.

I will continue to pitch ideas to editors, just as equally as I will continue to write here and on Medium, but I like the structure doing a newsletter gives me, and I see it as an opportunity to learn new skills while still sharing the kind of information I was collating for the F-Word blog posts.

If you'd like to subscribe to the Sticks 'N' Strings newsletter, you can do so using this form. If you're not interested and are annoyed that I've left The F-Word, it's worth mentioning that I also write for Louder Than War and Get In Her Ears, and will continue to do so. Similarly, I'll continue to use this blog to signpost articles I've written elsewhere.

Sticks ’N’ Strings: A manifesto

The image of Florence + The Machine fans at British Summer Time Fest never gets old...

Why Sticks ’N’ Strings?

Over the past ten - fifteen years digital disruption has shifted the economic focus of the music business away from record sales towards live music. It is no longer enough for bands to have a platinum selling album: Not when you need 100 streams of a song to count as one sale and payment per stream is so low. If you want to have a successful career you must sell a lot of t-shirts and tour. A Lot. For years at a time, on as many continents as possible.

From a fan point of view, bands and artists who might previously have been less available to you are now much more accessible to fans thanks to social media. Also, whereas once you might have seen your favourite band live about once every five years or so, now you’re seeing them at least once every couple of years, often more than that. In an experience economy led age, more and more people are going to gigs, and to festivals. Sadly, where you get increasingly large groups of people, you also get an increased statistical likelihood that bad stuff will happen.

Women being groped at gigs. Women being sexually assaulted at music festivals. Women being upskirted at music festivals. And the more subtle behaviours that can also ruin a woman’s night out. 

It doesn’t happen to everyone, but it happens often enough to send a specific message.

That perhaps our concert halls, clubs, pubs, arenas and festival sites are places where women and girls are not welcome on our own terms. That our attendance and enjoyment is contingent on the whims and behaviours of the men in the crowd, and the unspoken assumption that women’s bodies are always up for grabs, whether on a crowded train or up against a barrier at a concert.

The UK Live Music Census 2017 highlighted that 66% of music venues surveyed “do not have a sexual harassment policy” and that, similarly, 87% of promoters surveyed “do not have a sexual harassment policy”. The survey raises similar concerns about child protection and terrorism and page 71 of the census report covers specific recommendations to address these issues.

If we move from the moshpit to the stage, things aren’t necessarily any better. The ratio of women headlining music festivals in the UK in comparison to the talent pool available to organisers, is woeful. Having reported on the issue in 2017, the BBC returned to the issue in 2018 to see if things had improved: They hadn’t. 

In a related note, there’s no guarantee that even if you score a headline slot on a tour or at a festival that you’ll be paid as much as your male contemporaries: HAIM famously sacked their booking agent last year after being paid a tenth of the fee of a male performer they shared a festival bill with. They have since hired Florence + The Machine’s booking agent, Emma Banks. On the subject of Ms Welch, while Florence headlined Glastonbury in 2015, making her the first British woman this century to do so, and the youngest person in a long time to do so, she hasn’t headlined Glastonbury since and, British Summer Time aside, the festivals she does headline are the smaller ones. That she sells out both her arena tours and these smaller festivals would suggest, once again, that this is an example of an artist punching below their weight.

If we look at concert hall gigs, clubs and pubs, things aren’t any better: Sexist promoters who treat women performers as a novelty are not unusual.

What now?

I felt this image of my desk would be more realistic than Unsplash...

I am all too aware that I cannot solve these problems myself. But I do want to at least try to make a difference, and to do so by using tools that I know I can use: Words and information. 

Sticks ’N’ Strings is being launched as a monthly newsletter that will promote women in the UK live music arena. It will do this by:

• Providing a monthly gig guide of gigs coming up by women/non binary artists

• Providing information on campaigns that aim to make festivals and gigs safer places for women

• Shining a spotlight on music journalism that bigs up women/non binary artists and which has interesting stuff to say about women and the music industry.

• Bigging up female gig promoters, activists, websites and other supportive folk.

The focus will be on all-women, women-dominated, women-fronted and non binary bands and artists of all musical genres and of all levels of success. From bedroom bands to stadium stars, choirs and orchestras to rappers and beatboxers, and all points in-between.

I don’t expect to change the world by putting out this newsletter, but I know that I will enjoy acting as a klaxon for the amazing pool of women and non binary musicians out there, many of whom are punching well below their weight right now and are not being given the attention they deserve.

Similarly, for all the gig going girls and women out there, if I can introduce you to some new gig going pals, get you inspired to go and see some fantastic bands and artists you might never have heard before, and point you in the direction of campaigns for safer spaces, I’ll be happy.

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