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Keychange gender diversity campaign launches manifesto at European Parliament
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 20 November 2018
PRS Foundation CEO Vanessa Reed will today present a manifesto for the organisation’s Keychange initiative at the European Parliament in Brussels. The document lays out plans to increase and sustain the number of women in the music industry, with the ultimate aim of reaching a 50/50 gender balance across the board.
The two year project was launched in September last year, with 200,000 euros of EU funding as part of the Creative Europe programme. Among its activities is encouraging festivals to pledge that they will achieve an equal gender balance on their line-ups by 2022, something 140 events have now signed up.
Today’s manifesto launch lays out plans and recommendations for the second year of the project, and beyond. There are four core areas which the project believes need addressing, in order to truly improve gender diversity in the music industry.
The manifesto says that there need to be improvements in working conditions for women, as well as more women in senior positions. It also calls for more investment for targeted programmes to improve female participation both at an artist and a business level. Plus, it says that there should be independent research conducted into the current gender gap, and education to tackle gender stereotypes in schools.
“Launching this manifesto at an event which brings together Keychange participants, MEPs, the European Commission and music industry bodies is an important way of demonstrating how far we’ve come since we launched Keychange in September 2017”, says Reed.
She goes on: “Alongside the overwhelming interest in the Keychange festival pledge, the manifesto highlights the valuable contributions Keychange artists and innovators are making to the wider reaching debate about what needs to change in the industry. Collaborative action and a wholesale look at how we can nurture and sustain a broader range of talent in our workforce underpins their proposals. I hope this first set of recommendations provides a powerful starting point for further debate about the best practical steps towards tangible and lasting improvements which will benefit everyone”.
