Women and Equalities Committee
Oral evidence: Misogyny in music, HC 317
Wednesday 24 May 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 24 May 2023.
Members present: Caroline Nokes (Chair); Elliot Colburn; Dame Caroline Dinenage; Kim Johnson; Kate Osborne; Ms Anum Qaisar.
Questions 153 - 203
Witnesses
I: Marta Pallarès Olivares, Head of International Press and PR at Primavera Sound Festival; John Shortell, Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Musicians’ Union; and Lauren Down, Managing Director at End of the Road Festival.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– [Add names of witnesses and hyperlink to submissions]
Witnesses: Marta Pallarès Olivares, John Shortell and Lauren Down.
Q153 Chair: Good afternoon and welcome to this afternoon’s session of the Women and Equalities Select Committee and our inquiry into misogyny in music. I thank our witnesses for attending. We have Marta Pallarès Olivares, head of international press and PR at Primavera Sound Festival—thank you for coming over from Barcelona for us; John Shortell, head of equality, diversity and inclusion at the Musicians’ Union; and Lauren Down, who is the managing director of the End of the Road Festival and a board member of the Association of Independent Festivals. Members of the Committee will ask questions of witnesses in turn, but if anyone wants to come in on a question please indicate and we will try to bring you in at an appropriate moment.
I will start with questions specifically about the representation of women at festivals and the work you do to try to ensure there is a balanced line-up. Lauren, what does the current landscape look like in female representation?
Lauren Down: Thank you very much for having me at this Committee and for the question. The current landscape is not as balanced as we would like it to be. A recent report said 11% of musicians set to play at 104 UK festivals this summer were women; 11% is really low. The AIF has 105 members, and we ran our own survey at the end of April, which found that 20% of our members have a 50:50 balanced line-up and 93% had at least one female headliner. So when we look at the bigger picture, the independent sector is doing a lot better than the majors.
Q154 Chair: Thank you. Is the picture the same for non-binary artists? Is there effort going into making sure they are also represented?
Lauren Down: Definitely an effort is made to make sure that they are represented, but it is certainly not enough across the whole industry, not just festivals.
Q155 Chair: I think that is a fair comment. Certainly information that we have had in previous sessions has indicated that it is very difficult, if labels are not signing female artists in the first place, for those artists to then have their big breakthrough so that they end up in a position to headline. Your festival, Lauren, has no female headliners this year.
Lauren Down: No, not for lack of trying. Festival headliners is a very complex ecosystem that starts with grassroots venues being able to support musicians, with labels being able to sign acts and with agents taking on acts. We have a 57% mixed male, female and non-binary line-up this year; that is 57% overall. Even though we don’t have any female headliners, the line-up overall is balanced. To us, that is just as important because you have to be part of the pipeline that creates the headliners of tomorrow.
There are lots of obstacles when it comes to booking headliners. I have heard witnesses in previous sessions talk about album cycles, and they affect us as well in terms of touring cycles. You then have exclusivities that are put on you by larger events. You also have a certain number of artists who will be outside of your budget as an independent festival.
Q156 Chair: Did the lack of female headliners mean that you put more effort into a more balanced line-up in total?
Lauren Down: We have always put a very strong effort into a more balanced line-up in total. Since I started working there in 2014, it has only improved as the years have gone by. We had 56% female, mixed, non-binary in 2022. We achieved 51% female, mixed, non-binary in 2021. We had mixed male and female headliners in both those years, and we have a track record of giving artists their first ever festival headline performance. As of 2021, in the previous six years, for 50% of our headliners it was their first ever festival headline show.
Q157 Chair: Thank you. Across festivals in general—to broaden it out from just picking on you, and I apologise for that—is there a fear that more female artists would lead to a loss in revenue, or is the challenge that you don’t have the artists signed, you don’t have the pipeline, you have the album cycle and so on, and it all comes together? It is not about revenue; it is about being able to find the artists in the first place?
Lauren Down: I think at the top, on the headliners, it is about the things that I just discussed. On the line-up further down the bill, there are a lot fewer excuses. There is so much incredible female talent out there that you would have to not be doing your job to find them. An act that can hold a crowd of 13,500 people takes time to come through and it takes money, effort and attention across all areas of the industry.
Q158 Chair: Thank you. Do you think that there should be any responsibility on festivals to make sure their line-ups are balanced?
Lauren Down: Absolutely.
Q159 Chair: How much of that is incumbent on the bigger festivals?
Lauren Down: I am not sure that I can comment on that particularly, because I am just here to represent End of the Road and the Association of Independent Festivals.
Q160 Chair: Do you feel that the Association of Independent Festivals is making a real effort?
Lauren Down: Yes.
Q161 Chair: Is that matched by other organisations?
Lauren Down: Well, the stats would say no.
Q162 Chair: I am sorry, all of my questions are directed to you. We will bring in the other witnesses—fear not. I want to understand whether exclusivity agreements that exist for some artists make it harder to have balanced line-ups?
Lauren Down: Yes, because if we talk about the talent pool at the top that is capable of headlining a massive show, and it is not in any particular year, it could vary—there could be lots of people on an album cycle and the pool is very rich. But it definitely diminishes the chances of artists being able to headline multiple events. Those with bigger budgets and more money have first dibs, I suppose.
Q163 Chair: Do you think there should be any responsibility on artists themselves or organisers or both to say no to exclusivity agreements, or are they just a fact of life that needs to be accepted?
Lauren Down: There seems to be an acceptance within the industry that we all understand exclusivity on headliners, but lower down the bill is where it gets more complicated. Exclusivity on headliners is problematic for us, largely because it comes from major festivals as opposed to other independents. But a lot of the time your headliners are selling your tickets, so you need to own that uniqueness. Luckily, End of the Road has always sold to its whole line-up. We normally sell a third of tickets before we even announce, and we have a very loyal audience who like coming to us just because they like the festival.
Chair: I will bring in Kate on headliners.
Q164 Kate Osborne: You have answered part of what I was going to ask you. Do you monitor the gender or sex of the people who come to your festivals—who buy the tickets—and how much, if any, impact not having a woman as a headliner might have on that? Are you aware of that? I know you said that the people coming buy tickets for the whole line-up, but I imagine that there is more of a draw for the headline acts.
Lauren Down: I don’t have those stats to hand, but I am happy to provide them after the fact in writing.
Q165 Kate Osborne: Do you capture those figures?
Lauren Down: Yes.
Kate Osborne: Thank you.
Q166 Ms Qaisar: Thank you for joining us today. My questions relate to Primavera, so I will be asking Marta, but feel free to jump in if you want to add anything. Marta, I have to be honest, I am not really a music festival goer. However, I do know of the hard work that you and your team have been doing, and I want to pick at it a bit more and gain more of an understanding. What have been your challenges in achieving that 50:50 mark?
Marta Pallarès Olivares: First of all, thank you very much for having me here. It is such an honour to belong to a festival that is not from the UK but to able to be here and explain how we have been doing this.
The journey started in 2018. In 2018, almost without noticing, we achieved around 30% of female representation at Primavera Sound. We just noticed that when the festival was over. Then we thought that, if we achieved this 30% or 33% of female representation without even noticing, what if we really tried to do it? The next year, 2019, we achieved what we called back then “the new normal”, which was that it should be absolutely normal to have 50% of women, non-binary acts or whatever—it doesn’t have to be only white men with guitars on stage.
That year the challenges were just about being in that mindset and trying to fill all the slots. As Lauren said, headliners might be more difficult some years, depending on the routes that they might have and if they have released a record or not. But we have always believed that, somehow, a headliner is a what you call a headliner; it is not like a computer that you just buy and it comes with x gigabytes of memory—she is a headliner if you put her in that slot.
The example I usually talk about is Solange. She had been to the festival before, and she was occupying lower spaces on the poster. Then we thought, “She should be a headliner. Why not?” We have seen her career grow, we thought that our audience might enjoy this and we are pretty much sure that she deserves to be on the slot—or Rosalía, who is coming back this year after playing several times in Primavera; last time, she was already a headliner.
The challenges for us right now are that we are competing against ourselves. We are here because we put a spotlight on us, so now we know that we have to live up to the memory, which is not a memory; it is a—
Q167 Ms Qaisar: How will you overcome those challenges? It sounds like, within the team at Primavera, there is a cultural attitude of, “Why isn’t this the new normal? Why can’t we have 50:50 line-ups? Moving forward, how are you going to overcome those barriers?
Marta Pallarès Olivares: I think that an important clue is to have a very diverse team. It is really important in our company—as in any company—that we are also 50:50 male and female. We have several heads of department. At the radio station, the director is a woman. The co-ordinator of the booking department is a woman. There is also logistics. We have a woman in charge of press and PR—that is me.
I think that, first of all, it is very important that you look inwards. Then you might think, “Okay, are we doing what we can really do in our company?” Is all the company only white people? In our case, that is something that we really need to improve, because we don’t have enough racially diverse staff yet. Do we have enough people from the LGBTQ community? Do we have enough women? Do we have enough non-binary people? Then it is easier to think differently.
That also means that all the audiences will be different. They will ask for different things from us, and we will be able to deliver. But it is not something that comes just from one day to another: the challenges keep changing.
Q168 Ms Qaisar: If you will pardon the pun, this is all music to my ears—[Laughter.] I thought that was quite funny as well. I am curious to learn a little more about what feedback you have gained from the general public, artists and bookers from having this 50:50 line-up.
Marta Pallarès Olivares: I won’t lie: 2019 was hell on earth at the beginning. When we released the line-up, we had a tremendous backlash, especially online, which, of course, is very easy and cheap to do. Many people who felt Primavera Sound was something of their own felt betrayed: “This is not appealing to me any more. This is not the festival that I used to attend.” Then we started receiving all this backlash saying, “This is only a PR stunt. You are a music festival. You are not a women’s community. Why are you doing this? We only care about your music.” We received a lot of criticism online.
Just after this first wave, we started receiving praise and more praise and more praise, especially from people who had never attended a music festival before because they did not feel safe; because the music at music festivals was not the music they were listening to in their bedrooms; or maybe because they thought, “I am not interested in this.”
Then we started receiving a lot of comments from very young, gay boys, who said, “Yes, I am going to come, because my friends are also coming, and I think that I will feel safe in this festival”—I think that safety in our festivals is also something that will also be talked about in this Committee. We started receiving praise saying, “I really love this band; it is really small, but you have programmed it. These girls are doing music the way I would like to do music if I can at some point.”
To answer the question that you asked first, the proof that this works is that, for the first time, in one year we had more audience than ever. We usually sold out, but that year we increased our capacity. On that Thursday, we had about 60,000 people, more or less, and on Friday as well. On Saturday, we sold out with 65,000, with a line-up that portrayed classical indie acts, with White Lies; James Blake; the biggest Latino superstar of Reggaeton in Colombia, J Balvin; and a girl from Barcelona, Rosalía. We sold out the festival with increased capacity for the first time ever. So it works. If you want to look at it financially, it works.
Q169 Ms Qaisar: You are not seeing a reduction in tickets?
Marta Pallarès Olivares: No.
Q170 Ms Qaisar: In fact, you are increasing capacity. That is really interesting. You said something that I want to pick up on. You said, anecdotally, that young, gay boys have said they feel safe there. The Committee has heard evidence from women in different parts of the music industry who have said they don’t feel safe more often than not. Do you think that having not just a 50:50 line-up but a gender-balanced workforce has created a safe space at this concert?
Marta Pallarès Olivares: Absolutely, because then you think differently. If you have only men on your staff, they typically don’t feel unsafe, unless they are from LGBTQ communities. If you have only straight guys in your company, it is less likely that they have felt threatened, but if you have a lot of women in your company, or if you have people from diverse social backgrounds, it is probable that they have felt unsafe and they have felt scared if they were lost between stages and could not find their friends. When you work on the other side of the business, you think about that. If you try to create a festival that you would like to attend as an audience, you have those things in mind, absolutely.
Q171 Ms Qaisar: For sure. A lot of the major festivals will sell out well in advance of the line-up being announced. Do you think that this has created a sense of complacency among organisations when they are potentially looking at having a gender-balanced line-up?
Marta Pallarès Olivares: Could be, absolutely. The problem is, as we say in Spain “Esto es pan para hoy, hambre para mañana”, which means, “I am going to have bread today. I am going to be hungry tomorrow.” If we don’t change the way that we do things, at some point our audiences are going to stay at home—“We grow old, we have kids, we don’t have the energy any more.” If we just try to cater to the audience that used to buy the tickets, at some point they won’t be there any more. By the time we try to change the line-ups to appeal to someone different, you will be so far away, that the train will have passed. If we still work the way that we used to, those sold-outs won’t be there any more.
Q172 Ms Qaisar: You have kind of answered my last question, but I am going to ask it in a more specific manner. If having a gender-balanced line-up does not increase the sale of tickets—you have said it increases the sale of tickets—and is not a factor, why should organisations and other festivals have gender-balanced line-ups? What positives have you seen from that since 2019?
Marta Pallarès Olivares: Why should any company have gender-balanced staff? Yesterday the Spanish Government passed a law that forces companies in IBEX 35—the companies in public offer—Government, electoral candidacies and any kind of public organisation to have at least 40% women on their staff. That was the law that was passed just yesterday. I still wonder why that does not apply to many other things. I understand that this can’t be directed to smaller companies but holding, for example, big companies accountable matters. If that happens with finances and this kind of top businesses, why not festivals? We should do it because we have to if we want to be the mirror of our society.
Ms Qaisar: Marta, thank you so much. As I said at the start, I am not a festival goer, but I think you have convinced me otherwise.
Marta Pallarès Olivares: My mission here is done.
Q173 Chair: Marta, can I just ask the same question that Kate asked Lauren? When it comes to ticket sales, do you know what your audience gender breakdown is, and do you know that on advance ticket sales? Before people even know the line-up, do you know whether it is 50:50?
Marta Pallarès Olivares: We are actually in 50:50. I think that, last year, it was even a little bit higher on female attendance.
Q174 Chair: This might be commercially sensitive, so you don’t have to volunteer this information, but what percentage of your sales happens before you have released your line-up?
Marta Pallarès Olivares: It depends a lot. Last year, it was crazy because, of course, Primavera did not happen for two editions, 2020 and 2021. So we did a double edition for two weekends, and we sold out for a festival, or a double edition, that was 10 days long. It depends a lot.
This year, we have two editions in Spain—one in Barcelona, which will happen next week, and another one in Madrid the week after. This year is a little bit different. I don’t know, but off the top of my head, let’s say that maybe 35% to 40% this year was before announcing the line-up. Last year, it was absolutely everything before announcing, and it was a double edition.
Q175 Chair: Thank you, and I particularly thank you for coming over when it is the festival next week.
Marta Pallarès Olivares: To be really clear, I am on maternity leave, so that is why my colleagues are not missing me and I am happy to be here.
Q176 Kim Johnson: Good afternoon, panel. I want to pick up on the issues about women’s safety at live music, and my questions are directed at John. The Musicians’ Union describes sexual harassment at live music events as being shockingly normalised and seen as an “occupational hazard”. What do you think are the major barriers to reporting sexual harassment and assault at music festivals? What should be done to challenge it?
John Shortell: Thank you for that question. We ran a survey in 2019 to our members, looking specifically at people who had experienced sexual harassment, and we had over 800 responses to that survey. Almost half of the members who responded had experienced sexual harassment, and over 60% had witnessed someone experience sexual harassment.
To your point, over 85% of the people who had experienced sexual harassment did not report it, and the biggest barrier was fear of losing work, or workplace culture was cited as a barrier. The fear of losing work is a unique aspect that I think makes sexual harassment more likely and under-reported in the music industry. Our members all work in a range of venues, pubs and festival sites, where alcohol and drug consumption is more likely. There are really informal working practices, and employment relies on networks. You can see that, as these ways of working add up, they create a culture where sexual harassment is more likely to happen and more likely to go under-reported as well. Those are the main reasons that members don’t report it—fear of losing work and that workplace culture.
On what we would like to happen, the MU is in full support of the worker protection Bill, especially the third-party harassment protections. I have a stat somewhere here: 47% of members have been sexually harassed by an audience member. So the third-party protections are an important part of that legislation for our members. We are in full support of that, and we think it is an important step in creating safe workplaces for our members.
On tackling and preventing sexual harassment, we have a service called Safe Space, which is open to the entire music industry and is set up specifically, where anyone can report instances of sexual harassment or abuse in the music industry. Through that, we are able to provide legal advice and support, where appropriate, or signpost to support services when we can’t support.
Q177 Kim Johnson: John, is that Safe Space information readily and easily available to everybody?
John Shortell: Yes, it is, and we work with venues and festivals to make sure that there are posters in dressing rooms or rehearsal spaces so that that service is known. But there are massive gaps there, where women just don’t know that the service exists or don’t feel that they can access it, for numerous reasons. This is why we are also supportive of the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority. We think that that is a necessary step to help plug gaps and change the culture of the music industry or support the industry to change the culture.
We would like to see more work to provide visible reporting mechanisms at festivals and live music venues, as well as training for security and people working at the venues, so that they have more of an education in how to respond to reports of sexual harassment. We would also like to see more festivals engage with initiatives like Safer Spaces, which Lauren will be able to tell you more about. That provides physical safe spaces at events and festivals and specialised support for people who experience those behaviours there.
Q178 Kim Johnson: You just mentioned providing more training for security staff. How does that take place, and who is responsible for delivering that? That is often one of the major barriers—security staff maybe not acting responsibly and speedily enough in challenging these incidents.
John Shortell: Definitely, it is a massive gap. I am sure you have all heard of the Good Night Out campaign, and they will provide training like that. There are various training providers that, if I am honest, could provide wider equality, diversity and inclusion training, but specifically on how to respond to incidents of sexual harassment. I think that is a crucial part as well, and the report mechanism to go along with that. Where something is reported, it is logged and we can start to build a picture—“Is this venue specifically a problem, where we have sexual harassment commonly? How do we address that?” That is an important part of the puzzle of fixing this culture as well.
Q179 Kim Johnson: Are the reporting mechanisms one of the problems for artists and women attending live music events—knowing what to do and where they can go to do it?
John Shortell: Absolutely, and it is complicated further because most of the people who work in the industry are freelance, so there will not necessarily be an HR department or reporting mechanism in place in a lot of places. Where they are in place, we do see reports, but there are still those barriers of worrying about the consequences of reporting. That is why I think an anonymous reporting mechanism is important.
Q180 Kim Johnson: Some artists performing at live events will not have access to appropriate facilities. Do you see that also as a barrier in getting more women involved in these events?
John Shortell: Definitely. We have had a workforce that has been historically dominated by men, and women are often an afterthought. We have had reports where there are no changing facilities for women at venues, so women will be getting changed in cars, which obviously raises safety concerns, or they will be asked to share a dressing room with the rest of the band members and things like that. There are multiple issues going on there that create quite an unwelcome environment for women.
Q181 Kim Johnson: Your union has 30,000 members. What is the gender breakdown of your membership?
John Shortell: We are approaching 40% membership of women. We do lots of work to ensure that we recruit more women and that we have services specifically for women, like Safe Space or the maternity services that we provide. Also, we do a lot of work to make sure our committees are split 50:50 as well.
Q182 Kim Johnson: Thanks very much, John. My next questions are for Marta and Lauren. They are very much about what you are doing with men to call out and challenge these behaviours at live festivals, because until men stand up and challenge, a lot of these incidents continue, don’t they?
Lauren Down: Part of the Safer Spaces charter, which was originally launched in 2017 and relaunched in 2022, is to raise greater awareness about sexual violence at festivals. Part of it was to take a survivor-led approach to tackling sexual violence, and a lot of it was to spread information about being an active bystander and about consent. There are the five Ds of being an active bystander, which we train all our heads of department in, and they in turn train our stewards and bar staff. That is a really important place to start, with the men we work with who attend the event as staff, artists, performers or anything. That is a resource that is easily available online. It was devised by Right To Be. That is probably one of the most important ways.
A lot of it probably comes back to everything that Marta was saying in terms of representation. It is about ensuring that your workforce is diverse, so you have the opinions of people from multiple different backgrounds feeding into the situations and feeding into what is the right or wrong way to do things.
Q183 Kim Johnson: I go back to the point I raised before, that your survey identified the issue as being normalised and just an occupational hazard. It is about providing information to all of the people involved in the festivals to ensure that they know this is a serious incident that needs to be reported.
Over to you, Marta. What do you do at your respective festivals about asking men to call out sexual violence?
Marta Pallarès Olivares: We started in 2018 with a protocol that was developed by the Barcelona town hall, which was a protocol against sexual harassment in nightlife venues and festivals. We were the first ones to implement that protocol, together with several venues and the Barcelona town hall. In 2019, together with the campaign on the new normal, we spread the scope and made a new protocol by ourselves, which was called Nobody is Normal, because, what is it to be normal nowadays? It is not only against sexual harassment, but also a celebration of diversity and a protocol against fear. A festival is a space for transgression, for community, for celebration; no one should be afraid of expressing her own or his own self—themselves—in a music festival.
Just a couple of days ago, we announced again the protocol, which has different aspects—for example, the safe spaces in the festival, where you can just go and stay for a while, or where you can go and report anything that might have happened to you or that you might have witnessed. We have some staff working around the venue. I want to stress how important it is, in the light of what John was saying, that this has to be felt as something that is not threatening. These staff are composed of so many diverse people in terms of race, physicalities and sexual orientation, so I, as a woman, or a guy or whoever else is feeling unsafe can feel that these people will listen to them. Also, our staff are trained to detect any possible conflicts.
I think, however, that everything is linked, so the more we invest in gender-balanced line-ups, the more diverse our audience is going to be and the safer it is going to be for everyone. Let’s say that, with an anti-sexual harassment protocol, the goal is for it to disappear so we don’t have to use it any more.
Q184 Chair: John, can I just go back to what you were saying about venues? If the Musicians’ Union gets wind that there is a particular venue where people are unsafe and where there are more reports of sexual harassment, abuse or assaults, what do you actually do? How do you, as a union, go about tackling that with the venue?
John Shortell: First, it’s important just to say that the Safe Space service, which people report that through, is survivor-led, so we will always be led by the survivor if they want to take action or not.
To your point, if we got multiple reports about a venue and were able to contact that venue without revealing anyone’s identity, we can have a conversation with that venue to say, “We have received multiple reports of sexual harassment in this instance in your venue. Is there something specific about the way your venue is set up? Is it the fact that the policies and procedures aren’t in place that is enabling this to happen? What is the culture of your venue that is enabling so many incidents of sexual harassment to happen?” We work with them to recommend policy training. There are sample policies on our website, which are quite easy and accessible for venues to access and implement themselves.
I do understand, though, that there is a funding in the grassroots sector issue, where many of the venues will not have the money for funding. We have done schemes in Liverpool—not just because I am from there—where we have worked with a number of venues and funded part of the training so that they can access it, because it was out of their reach. It is about working with the musician community as a whole, including venues, to look at how we can tackle this together. But the support is there from us.
Q185 Chair: Venues are receptive to those conversations, are they? Do they want to improve?
John Shortell: Absolutely, yes. Venues contact us about this, proactively in a lot of cases. That is not just on sexual harassment; we are talking about diverse line-ups as well—“How do we diversify the acts that we book?” Obviously that ecosystem leads right up to festival stages, so it is an important part of the conversation. Venues are actively looking to make change. As I said, there are barriers there to do with funding or staff. Some venues are run by two people, so obviously that is going to be really difficult to manage. But the willingness is there; it just needs a bit more support.
Q186 Kate Osborne: My question is for Lauren. Can you tell us about the monitoring that you do of festivals that have signed up to the AIF’s charter of best practice, please?
Lauren Down: Over 100 festivals have signed up to the charter. The charter encourages everybody to follow the best practice and adapt it for their own event—everybody is different, so everybody will take the principles and implement them in a way that is suitable for their event. The charter requires that you publish that and you make it fully accessible online. Then there is a kind of check-in every year, post-season, to see how the procedures have gone, what may have worked and what did not, and to share knowledge about what one event might have done that was very successful or what might not have gone quite so well.
Anecdotally, a lot of people had success with the Ask for Angela campaign, using that on their bars. A lot of people introduced new welfare spaces that they didn’t have before—specific safe spaces that they didn’t have before. There are professionals trained in mental health and in dealing with those that have been through sexual harassment or abuse onsite or in the wider world.
Those are the processes, I suppose, but it is down to each and every individual to implement what they think is correct for their event. Everybody who signed up to it really cares and really cares about learning from each other. That is one of the really important things that AIF provides—a network, so we can all improve together.
Q187 Kate Osborne: So they sign up and share best practice and so on, but do you check in any way that staff have undergone training so that they know what to do if they observe or hear about sexual violence?
Lauren Down: The AIF is a not-for-profit, and I think there are only two employees, so it is beyond their scope to be on the ground physically checking that everything happens in the way that the festival is saying it should. That has to sit on the individual organiser.
Q188 Kate Osborne: That leads nicely into my next question. We asked Safe Gigs for Women if festivals were supporting them financially. They said no, despite often being asked to attend. In your view, why are festivals not financing them?
Lauren Down: I don’t have an answer to that. Safe Gigs for Women work directly with AIF. The Safer Spaces charter and policy were developed with Safe Gigs for Women, along with UN Women, Rape Crisis England, Good Night Out and Girls Against, so there is communication directly with the people who are experienced and who know what they are talking about.
But when we talk about financial investment into the safety of our audience, this doesn’t just come from working with outside organisations; it is an internal procedure. When End of the Road signed the charter, we took it as a starting point. We then went away and we worked with UN Women—not Safe Gigs for Women, but a different organisation—and we put money into that. They helped us develop our procedures and our policies. We invested in the time to train all the heads of department in our procedures and policies and invested in the time for them to then train their departments onsite.
There are very, very basic things about safety that you invest in. You invest in good lighting; you invest in good risk assessments. It is comparable to what John was saying about venues, when you notice there might be venues that are repeatedly problematic. You have to ask yourself, “Okay, why is that happening on that particular part of the site? Is there an alley with toilets that is poorly lit? What do we need to do about that?” It is about working with security companies and making sure that you are spending your money on security with the best possible company out there. I know it has been spoken about in this Committee before, but there is a serious skill shortage with security companies.
So it is about the investment in the ecosystem of making safer spaces at festivals, which comes from all different directions; it comes from investing in a diverse workforce and everything Marta was talking about.
Q189 Kate Osborne: Should funding of the volunteer groups be a condition of festivals being a signatory to the AIF’s charter?
Lauren Down: No, I think the Government should be funding these organisations. Not-for-profit organisations have the expertise. They don't necessarily have the same red tape and they already know what they are doing. They lack the resources. I would love to see it come from within, and I am open to those conversations, but no one has brought those conversations to me. I do think that the independent sector is woefully underfunded.
Q190 Chair: Can I just ask a question, Lauren? I think you talked about making sure that you are working with the best security companies. How do you go about determining that? What are the measures that you use, both in terms of accreditation but also in terms of sharing experiences with other festivals in terms of who is good and who is bad?
Lauren Down: You have hit the nail on the head with the last point. You share information with other festivals about who has done a good job. You do your due diligence on the company, you take professional recommendations, you take personal recommendations and you make sure that they all have the correct training in place. But I do think that the training that security goes through—you have to go through SIA training to get your badge—has massive holes in it. A lot of the issues with security could be solved by plugging the holes in that training, bringing in the organisations that we have spoken about, like Girls Against, Good Night Out and Safe Gigs for Women, to inform a more detailed and survivor-led and orientated package as part of that licence. The professionals who turn up onsite are supposed to have already gone through this training, but we retrain them how we like to do things. If we knew that they were already arriving with a higher standard of professionalism in this area, it would be a massive relief.
Q191 Chair: You talked about the holes in their training—the gaps. I am not necessarily going to ask you to list what those gaps are here and now, but it would be useful for us to have an idea of examples of that, because that could very well be an area in which we want to make recommendations as to how, for accreditation and licensing, that training needs to be improved.
Lauren Down: I can certainly provide some answers in writing afterwards, but for now I can certainly say that it is very outdated, it is definitely not survivor-led and it is definitely coming from a world that is very male-dominated—the security industry is incredibly male-dominated and incredibly white.
Chair: Thank you for that. Caroline.
Q192 Dame Caroline Dinenage: Good afternoon, everybody. It is lovely to see you all. I am going to focus on you, John—I apologise. I want to talk to you about the music industry more generally. You will be aware that, a few years ago, in response to some of the concerns around misogyny, sexual harassment, bullying and what have you in the sector, the Musicians' Union, alongside the Independent Society of Musicians, set up a code of practice. We took evidence the other day from the chief executive of the ISM, who told us that this code of practice that it developed in partnership with you had been, “a resounding failure” because the industry, “doesn’t take much notice of codes”. What are your thoughts on that?
John Shortell: You know what, I wouldn’t disagree. We have had over 50 signatories on the code. The problem for me is not the code. The problem is what Kate pointed out before: the code isn’t monitored or enforced in any way. Basically, we do not have the resources to be able to do it. We do get signatories to the code of practice, which outlines acceptable behaviour and standards that we expect to see in the music industry.
What we have with the code is something to hold people—organisations—accountable to. Where we do receive reports, as we spoke about earlier, we can then contact organisations and provide recommendations for training and policy or, if necessary, take them off the list of signatories. In terms of the impact that has on the industry, I cannot imagine that it is very severe or that people will take that much notice of being removed as a signatory.
What we are working on at the moment is a revised code of practice with the BPI, the Ivors Academy and UK Music, which will be much more overarching, be supported by training and be much more robust. There is also the anti-racism code of conduct from Black Lives in Music—I know that Charisse was in the first session—and that is going to be much more robust. That will be monitored by Black Lives in Music and, again, supported by training.
While I do not disagree, I do not think it was a complete waste of time, but I do not think it has had the impact that we would have hoped.
Q193 Dame Caroline Dinenage: In terms of this whole area of enforcement—how these things are monitored and enforced, and what checks and balances can be used against those that are not enforcing the code—we are talking about the highest levels of a multimillion-pound industry, so one would have hoped that it could find a way to come together and put in place the systems and processes to enforce these things quite robustly, because it is good for the industry, particularly given that so many of your consumers are so young and impressionable. To what extent do you think it is up to the music industry, yourselves and others to put in place these systems, and to what extent do you think the Government have a role?
John Shortell: As you pointed out, both have a role. As you know, most of the industry—certainly the people we are working with, like the BPI and UK Music—have been involved from the beginning in the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority and we will be supporting that. We supported it from its creation and we will support it when launches as well.
Again, because of the issues you pointed out—it is a multimillion-pound industry—the issue we have is that there are lots of different sectors in the industry and lots of different ways of working, staffed by freelancers. It will not necessarily be that different, but there will be nuances within each sector. So we are looking for sectorial expertise from the education sector, the classical world, and the live industry and festivals so that we can address those problems properly. I think that is where the music industry's responsibility is, being part of that group that is helping to launch the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority.
Where the Government have a role to play is in the legislation. As I pointed out before, we are really interested to see the worker protection Bill pass. I think that is passing through Houses of Parliament currently. I think there have been some issues with it around third-party protections and harassment. We are keen to see that pass, for the reasons that I have pointed out before.
The other issue that we have with our members is, as I pointed out before, that 90% of them work in a freelance capacity. Because of the way that they work, some of them fall through the gaps in legislation in terms of the protections that the Equality Act affords. When they come to us for legal advice on discrimination or sexual harassment, we find ourselves in a position where there is no legal route to justice. We have a campaign about it called Protect Freelancers Too, which I would recommend that you take a look at if you have not seen it already. Those are some of the ways I think the Government can help.
Obviously there are wider issues when we look at the representation of women in the music industry, not just safety, and that feeds into the conversation that we were having earlier about why we don’t see more women in headline slots. Am I jumping ahead with my answers now?
Dame Caroline Dinenage: No, carry on.
John Shortell: I work with a lot of women members in my job. Safety is one of the major concerns that they come to us with. The second concern, and a barrier, in terms of representation of women in the music industry is childcare and the way that that works for freelancers, and that is especially difficult when women go on tour as well.
A freelance musician’s working schedule can change day by day, and the location can change quite often, so if they have booked childcare, that can leave them with childcare that they don’t need, and then they have to scrabble around to rearrange the childcare again. The last-minute nature of freelance bookings means that women with caring responsibilities have to work out these super-complex childcare arrangements before they commit to a job, whereas someone without children doesn’t have to, and people without children tend to be men or younger women.
So research by an organisation called Parents & Carers in Performing Arts, found that nine out of 10 mothers and female carers working in the industry are the primary carers of children. That same research found that over 45% of women often turned down jobs because of caring responsibilities.
That is not a choice that women are actively making. That is a consequence of the lack of structures to support women with childcare obligations in the music industry. With that, there is the issue of affordable, flexible, high-quality childcare. That just does not exist for our members. Where it does exist, the cost is out of reach for most of our members as well. We see that as another barrier to women being visible or being able to progress their careers in the music industry.
Marta Pallarès Olivares: I would like to add that there is a wonderful association in Spain—I know that they are watching right now—called Asociación de Mujeres de la Industria de la Música—Women in the Music Business. They did a study last year that tackled exactly these kinds of issues. The numbers are absolutely astonishing. Only 33% of women in the music business have kids against 48% in the female workforce.
We have to think, "Why is that?" The situation is inherently wrong and it doesn’t help us to have kids. The difference is so big. I think that that is another huge barrier—as John was saying—when we decide that we want to work in this business. Increasingly, we have younger women working in music, and it is very good news that we have younger generations joining us. But why must we decide that it is over for us when we top 40 years old or something like that? We cannot access senior roles because perhaps we decide, “It is now or never: we want to have kids.” We have to say goodbye to our jobs in order to have a family that involves children. That is a huge issue when we want to have a senior workforce that also involves women so that we can make decisions.
Q194 Dame Caroline Dinenage: John, you made the point that the ready availability of flexible, affordable childcare is at the root of this problem. I do not disagree that that is a problem, but it is not just a problem for the music industry; it is a problem for women right across the country. But the music industry has a particular problem retaining its female workforce, and I would suggest to you and Marta that having a lack of women higher up the food chain in decision-making roles also means an industry that is not making policies that are geared towards their female workforces. To what extent are you putting in place measures that could help that pipeline?
We have heard so much evidence from those within the music industry— across sectors, from classical music right the way through to pop and everything in between—that you have to put up with so much negativity and so much bad treatment. You don’t even bother to report it or stand up to it, because that is the end of your career—you are done. What can be done to overcome that?
John Shortell: It is going back to that point about freelancers and informal networks as well. I completely agree with you that, in some respects, there isn’t policy and practice in place. Where we have collective bargaining agreements, with employed musicians, there is definitely policy and practice in place and what you would expect to see from an employer in terms of maternity leave. What I am talking about is the freelancer who relies on the childcare sector to provide that flexible, ad hoc childcare. That is the bit that I am saying is the barrier to our members.
Where we have a collective bargaining agreements, you will see better maternity and parental leave policies. With the freelance workforce, it is impossible to have those agreements, so you won’t see the same, and they are relying on the childcare that exists outside of employment, let’s say, to be able to do that.
Going back to why women don’t raise their heads, it is the freelance nature of the work again. The minute someone raises a problem—whether that be sexual harassment, lack of facilities for women or discrimination—generally what we will see at the MU is that they become the problem. The person who is complaining—the woman in this instance—is forced out of the workforce or victimised. We quite often see the perpetrator stay in the workforce and move up the workforce. Yes, it is a massive problem for us.
Q195 Dame Caroline Dinenage: Even outside of the freelancer world, within the industry where people are employees, we still have an issue: 4% referenced a supportive employer, which is not good by any stretch of the imagination. This is for childcare, but also for maternity issues as well. Surely, this is because there is a lack of women in these decision-making roles bringing forward women-friendly policies within the business. What can the industry do to address it, and what should the Government do to address it?
John Shortell: We talk a lot about the lack of women in leadership positions. Again, I think that would be a game changer in terms of the way a workplace was set up. Women have the lived experience of the things that they need, which would be able to inform that. Again, there is Keychange, an organisation working specifically with festivals to look at a 50:50 gender balance. I think it started off specifically looking at festivals, but now it is much wider, isn’t it, looking at organisations?
I think Nadia Khan from Women in CTRL has given evidence, and they look at the representation of women on boards. We work with a lot of these organisations to make sure that women are in leadership positions and in decision-making capacities as well. Those organisations do exist, and we have been encouraging the industry to work with them.
Lauren Down: I would like to come in on this as well. AIF is similar. We put a lot of work in to make sure that the board has a good gender balance and End of the Road does similar. Our workforce is about 63% female. A lot of them are occupying roles that, a lot of the time, are considered more male—for example, production staff, engineers and heads of technical.
I think you have to start somewhere, and organisations like MU and the AIF can lead that way. This is based on directors and organisers alone, but I think 48.48% of AIF’s members are female. That is nearly half of the organisation’s festivals being female-led. It is about supporting those organisations to make that change, so that it can be seen. That is the important thing—for somebody to see somebody who looks like them doing a role that they want to be able to do.
Just coming back to childcare, I want to flag that I think the music industry has a very specific issue, in that the hours that are expected are very antisocial. They are outside of your normal nine to five. You are expected to be up late, probably drinking to be sociable. You are expected to work at the weekends. I think those with childcare needs who prioritise family or need to stay at home because they cannot find good childcare begin to feel invisible in the industry and they begin to doubt their worth or their contribution. Then they do become more invisible, and then you are lacking representation. It is a whole kind of cycle.
Q196 Dame Caroline Dinenage: To what extent do you think there is a sense of—I’ll use this word, although it’s probably not the word I am searching for—arrogance at the top of the industry, that says, “All this sexual equality, all this focusing on rooting out bullying, all this focus on trying to push equality doesn’t really apply to us”?
Lauren Down: There is a lot of arrogance around that. These issues exist everywhere and, even if you are an organisation that feels like you are doing well, you are never going to be doing well enough. There is always more that you can be doing. With all forms of prejudice and discrimination, a lot of the time no real change is going to happen unless people are willing to give up the power that they have at the top to make that change possible.
Q197 Dame Caroline Dinenage: Just finally before I shut up, is there anything else that you think the Government could or should be doing, besides the things you have already mentioned, that would move the dial on that?
Lauren Down: I really think that paternity leave in this country is insufficient. I think it is based on a very outdated idea of women or child bearers as the caregivers and the supporting partner as the provider. I know from people I have worked with that they are the ones who end up taking maternity leave and looking after the children because it is financially better for them as a couple to do so. I really think that that is something that should be addressed.
Dame Caroline Dinenage: There is a role for Government within sectors on that, because there is a kind of stigma about guys who take paternity leave as well.
John Shortell: Two other issues that are raised quite frequently by our female members are the way maternity allowance applies to the self-employed and the fact that there are only 10 keeping in touch days. A lot of our female members say that that is not enough to sustain their careers while they are on maternity leave. It is different to being employed. Freelance musicians need to stay on fixers’ and bookers’ radars. That means working regularly for them. If they don’t, they will just drop off and we perpetuate the problem. That is another issue that has been raised.
There is an issue with shared parental leave for freelancers as well. Self-employed parents are not eligible for shared parental pay, so the current system of maternity leave places the entire burden of childcare on the woman and offers no financial support to the partner, who might like to share some of the childcare. As I have just explained, flexibility of childcare for freelance musicians is crucial if they are to keep their business afloat while they are on maternity leave. Those are two points that I would add.
Q198 Dame Caroline Dinenage: Marta, do you have anything to add to that?
Marta Pallarès Olivares: Well, as a recent mother myself, I feel that I am very lucky because my situation is not at all what I see around me. I am not a freelancer and, as John was saying, that is huge, because of course then I can count on the support system behind me. Also, I think that, somehow, when motherhood hits when you are already in a senior position, it is way better and way easier.
But if you want to start a career, you are going to commit—you are going to say no to so many things. In the same study that I mentioned before, from Mujeres en la Industria de la Música, 81% of women working in music in Spain said that they were going to give up something—having children, having a personal life or getting a raise—because they had to take care of a sick parent or something like that. That is huge.
The way that our social and family environment affects us only, as women, is tremendous. It doesn’t have anything to do with men. I can see that in my environment. I consider myself very lucky, but that is definitely not the usual thing.
Q199 Chair: Two things. Lauren, I think you made a really pertinent point about antisocial hours late at night, and irregularity as well—we all know that childcare providers want to have a consistent customer, nine to five, five days a week. Are the festivals themselves doing anything to make sure that female artists and technicians can bring children to festivals and find childcare?
Lauren Down: I cannot speak to the wider climate, because I don’t have that knowledge, but I can speak to End of the Road and, yes, we do. We provide extra passes for carers to come with parents, and sometimes we provide extra accommodation—extra caravans, extra boutique tents—to make sure that if you are working over the festival and you have childcare responsibilities, they can be tied in together. You do not necessarily have to leave your child at home or with a carer or with grandparents, which is often the way that a lot of people I know get by. So, yes, those options are there for parents at End of the Road.
Q200 Chair: Thank you for that. That is very helpful. Do you perceive that there is a difference with festivals—and I am going to use the term—"led by” women? Do they make more accommodations?
Lauren Down: I think there have to kind of be, as with anything that is led by a lived experience. I am not a mother, but I am a woman, and I think that that perspective comes into play. That is why it is really important to have that representation at the top level and to have somebody who knows what it is like to go through those things, or at least to have those people in senior positions within your organisation, even if they are not at the top.
Q201 Chair: Do you think it also makes a difference to issues around the safety of female festival goers and the efforts that go into making sure that there are sufficient safe spaces and properly trained security? When there are women at the top of organisations, do they make more of an effort to make sure that that happens?
Lauren Down: I am aware of a difference. Again, I can only speak for myself. I do not know anybody in this industry who hasn’t been through some form of sexual harassment, abuse or discrimination based on their gender, sexuality or ethnic background. Therefore, yes, I think if we have been through, we care more.
Q202 Elliot Colburn: Thank you very much, panel. John, I would like to come to you on the issue of non-disclosure agreements. This has been something that has been flagged up throughout this inquiry. We have had evidence both from Dr Cassandra Jones, but also from the chief executive of ISM, citing the use of NDAs as a reason for bullying and harassment in the industry and for the inability to report.
The Committee is very keen to get a better idea of what’s happening. NDAs are not supposed to be used for covering up crimes, essentially—let’s just call a spade a spade. In your experience in the industry, how commonplace is the use of NDAs, specifically on the issue of abuse and things that should be classified as criminal, but also more widely in terms of poor behaviour and things that might not necessarily pass the sniff test, if I could call it that? How commonplace have you found it, and how and why in your experience are they used?
John Shortell: It is obviously difficult to say how commonplace it is, because a lot of NDAs will stop members talking to us about it. I do know from working with members that NDAs are used in exactly the way you have described; they are quite often used to hide discriminatory behaviour, unlawful behaviour, sexual harassment or assault and to allow perpetrators to stay in the workplace or move from workplace to workplace with impunity. The person who has experienced sexual harassment or discriminatory behaviour often cannot work with that person again, for obvious reasons. So they are the ones who are suffering this.
Again, I could not speak to how widespread their use is, because of the issue of NDAs. I can tell you that what we would like to see with NDAs are actions similar to those that have recently been taken in higher education. I think it is really recently—it happened in February—that they were prohibited for the use of covering up sexual harassment or discrimination. We would love to see a similar mechanism in place for the music industry, or more widely, to stop the misuse of NDAs.
Q203 Elliot Colburn: I was going to ask what you thought the Government should do, so you have answered that question—thank you. As things stand, if one of your female members came to you, what would your advice be to them, or are you tied by the state of play at the moment unless there is legislative change?
John Shortell: We would need legislative change. It depends. In some cases, if the NDA was there to protect our member—to protect our member’s identity—then, 100%, if that is what our member wanted. Again, we would be led by the actions of our member, but, yes, we would need legislation. We need help with this.
Elliot Colburn: Thank you for that. That was very succinct, so thank you.
Chair: Thank you very much. Can I thank all our witnesses for the evidence that you have given this afternoon? It has been hugely appreciated. Lauren, I think we threw quite a few things at you that we would love you to follow up in writing. If either of the other two witnesses feel that there is anything that you would like to add in writing after the session, please do so, but thank you very much for the information that you have given us today.