Belles and Gals Sign up to Keychange
We at Belles and Gals are delighted to announce that we’ve signed up to Keychange.eu, joining other fantastic events in the UK such as The Americana Music Association UK, the Black Deer Festival, The British Country Music Festival, the Cambridge Folk Festival, BBC Introducing and many more great names in the industry. Here is a full list of the signatories and partners here – https://keychange.eu/partners/
What is the aim of Keychange?
‘Keychange is a pioneering international initiative which transforms the future of music whilst encouraging festivals and music organisations to achieve a 50:50 gender balance by 2022. 74 emerging artists and innovators each year from across Europe and Canada will take part in international festivals, showcase events, collaborations and a programme of creative labs. Keychange aims to accelerate change and create a better more inclusive music industry for present and future generations.‘
As part of signing up, each individual signatory has to make their own pledge and Belles and Gals are no different. Here are our pledges:
Ensure at least 50% of female lead artists at all live events – Hosting our own live events and sponsoring others, we will maintain to achieve at least 50% of all lead artists female. This is the easiest of the three pledges to maintain – however there will be times when Belles and Gals will sponsor/host or be involved in mixed genre events.
Move towards a 50%/50% balance of male/female musicians at all live events – This is a much tougher pledge for us to maintain. While many of our lead artists are indeed female, currently a large proportion of the ‘bands’ are male. We pledge to feature a wider range of female band members and encourage more female participation in this area of the industry.
Ensure at least 50% of our editorial and website staff are female – Currently Belles and Gals have a team consisting of 11 people, 8 of whom are female.
Gender equality in country music (and in the wider music industry) is a hot topic right now. Thankfully many festivals and events companies around the world and a number of country music specific ventures in the UK have signed up and made their own pledge – Belles and Gals would implore all UK country festivals to make the same pledge.
