Written evidence submitted by the Ivors Academy of Music Creators (MiM0022)
Introduction
The Ivors Academy is the UK’s independent association representing professional songwriters and composers. As champions of music creators for over 70 years, the organisation works to support, protect and celebrate music creators including through its internationally respected Ivors Awards.
Members of the Ivors Academy include Rebecca Ferguson, a MOBO award nominated singer-songwriter who has written four top-ten selling albums. She is also a Board and Senate member of the Ivors Academy and has courageously spoken out in public, highlighting the abuse that she has faced in the music industry and her experience of other people “controlling your money, when you eat, even who you date and who your friends are”. As a result of Ferguson’s statement, DCMS instructed Creative UK to convene a series of roundtables to discuss issues of bullying and harassment in the creative industries, culminating in the creation of the Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination Creative Industries Working Group.
The Ivors Academy is committed to addressing inclusion and the historical lack of diversity in the music industry, and to creating a safer and more inclusive environment. Our 12-point Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan 2020-2022 committed us to improving representation within our internal structures by ensuring that our governing bodies and Committees/Councils have a minimum 50% gender balance, 30% Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic representation, 10% creators with disabilities, the involvement of a minimum of one person aged under 25 and the avoidance of London-centric representation.[1]
As a result of this plan The Academy has reformed its governance structures seeing female membership of its board rise from 14% to 66%, one of the highest percentages in the music industry. We were also the first UK trade association to sign up to the Keychange pledge in 2019 which commits organisations to achieving a gender balance of 50:50 in the music industry[2] and we were the first organisation in the industry to report on gender and ethnicity pay gaps, despite our small team size which can make pay gaps harder to manage.
In 2022 we published a new code of conduct[3] which sets out the principles and standards of behaviour that we expect all Academy members to meet and also defines discriminatory behaviour, bullying and harassment thereby enabling our members to have the confidence to report inappropriate behaviour. Our Board and Senate members are also required to attend training on bullying and harassment as a condition of those memberships.
Our work to provide a platform for women in the music industry led to Academy Board Director Emily Saunders establishing We Are Music which signposts to support for those suffering bullying and harassment.
The Academy has also established an internal Ethics Committee that is tasked with putting together policy positions on issues such as misogyny, bullying and harassment, rescinding previously granted awards, and equality, diversity and inclusion. This Committee is chaired by Charlene Brown, the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Howlett Brown, who has over a decade of legal, culture, inclusion and financial services experience.
The Ivors Academy presents the most prestigious awards to songwriters and composers. An Ivor Novello Award or Ivor Composer Award is a unique peer-to-peer recognition of excellence and creativity in songwriting and composition. Our awards provide a platform that deliberately draws attention to the music and music creators that should be listened to. It is vital that the awards are a true reflection of the best music each year within the award criteria. The Academy continues to see a lack of gender balance in winners of awards across categories of the Ivors and Ivors Composer Awards but the Academy has consistently delivered gender balance in the selection of our judging panels. In our newest award, the Rising Star, we have consistently seen a majority of entries from women and in 2022 there was an all-female shortlist for the award. The decision we took to adopt anonymous judging has improved the ratio of female nominees and winners in our Composer Awards and we took the decision to remove the chart criteria for Ivors entries in response to concerns that the lack of gender balance in the music industry was perpetuating a bias toward male songwriters.
Misogynistic lyrics and their impacts
As the UK’s professional association for songwriters and composers, the Ivors Academy champions the rights of creators. This includes the right to free speech and artistic creativity. However, we do not and should not tolerate behaviour and language that encourages and condones violent behaviour, which includes misogyny.
While identifying the causality between violent and misogynistic lyrics and misogynistic behaviour is complex and contested there is anecdotal evidence that we have heard from women songwriters in our membership that they believe that these lyrics do in fact influence men’s behaviour. The normalisation of misogynistic lyrics can create an environment within which misogynistic speech or behaviour is tolerated and equally normalised.
We hope that having a space to discuss this topic through this Committee will help songwriters, artists, consumers and the wider industry to explore what is acceptable content, and for people to reflect on the language they use and whether how they are acting may excuse or encourage bad behaviour. As acceptable standards change with time and culture we should allow people the opportunity to assess past inappropriate behaviours and/or language and how they can individually improve their behaviour to make the industry more welcoming to everyone.
We do not want to see works censored due to differences in genuine moral or political beliefs, or stylistic differences. Since 2000 the BBC has not banned any records[4] but there is a long list of beloved and well-known songs that have been previously censored by the BBC, including ‘Space Oddity’ by David Bowie, ‘My Generation’ by the The Who, ‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and ‘Lola’ by the Kinks.[5] These bans were inappropriate and often counterproductive with a ban from the BBC creating even more attention for the song and recording.
Misogyny, bullying and sexual harassment in the music industry
Studies into sexual harassment in the music industry have found that the industry suffers from significant issues. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, a poll by the MU of its members found that:
A study, Bullying and Harassment in the Music Industry “Completely entangled in its fabric”, by Cassandra Jones & Kallia Manoussaki from the University of Winchester and University of West Scotland released in May 2022 found that 99% of the women surveyed had experienced bullying and 96% had experienced harassment in the music industry.[7] The survey found that men also experienced a high level of bullying (93%) and harassment (69%), but found that there was a significant difference in the impact that women and men felt that this behaviour had on them. 82% of women reported that their experiences of bullying and harassment negatively impacted them compared to only 48% of men reporting the same.[8]
The most common forms of harassment found by the study were:
The study also discovered that a significant proportion of workers in the industry had:
85% of those reporting bullying and harassment reported negative consequences, with 55% saying it had affected their mental health, 45% choosing never to work with the person responsible, and 42% confirmed it had negatively affected their professional relationships.[11]
Ultimately many are choosing to change their jobs and leave the music industry in the face of harassment. Jones & Manoussaki found that 22% took time off from working in the music industry, 15% had changed their job role in the music industry and 6% had stopped working in the music industry as a result of harassment.[12]
The Academy has received many anecdotal accounts from our female members that echo and underline these data.
Structural and cultural causes
Certain factors and structures in the music industry have made it harder to tackle bullying and harassment in the industry. According to employment data released by DCMS, as many as 70% of those working in music, performing and visual arts work on a self-employed or freelance basis[13] meaning that they often do not have a traditional HR department to go to if they are facing bullying and harassment. A report by Incorporated Society of Musicians found that 72% reporting harassment were self-employed at the time of their harassment[14]. Harassers are emboldened by the difference in employment status and those who suffer harassment fear harm to their career or being blacklisted for future work if they complain. Research from the MU found that only 19% of their members reported that they had contracts they work under which included policies or procedures to deal with incidents of sexual harassment[15].
This results in an underreporting of harassment and sexual assaults in the music industry. Jones & Manoussaki found that only 13% of respondents formally reported their harassment. When they did so, only 6% reported it to their line manager, 5% to their employer and only 2% reported it to the police. Of those who did report their harassment, 48% declared that nothing happened following their report and 40% said their career was negatively impacted[16].
Actions taken by the music industry
The music industry is working together to resolve these issues. DCMS has instructed Creative UK to convene a series of roundtables to discuss issues of bullying and harassment in the creative industries culminating in the creation of the Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination Creative Industries Working Group.
This Working Group will initially work with organisations in the film sector to lead on a plan to ‘prevent’, ‘protect’ and ‘monitor’ harassment in the sector. “The first plank will involve stopping bullying, harassment and discrimination from arising via cross-industry initiatives and codes of conduct. ‘Protect’ will push for those who face bullying to have easy access to support and advice and ‘monitor’ will ensure the industry examines long-term effectiveness of initiatives tackling the issue.”[17]
Major UK broadcasters (ITV, Sky, BBC, Channel 4, and Channel 5) have backed the proposals to create an Independent Standards Authority (ISA) and committed financial support for the next stage of this development. According to Dame Heather Rabbatts, Chair of Time’s Up UK “The ISA will conduct expert led investigations where both sides can be heard by an independent panel of skilled investigators working to the highest standards of legal confidentiality.”
Other schemes have also been created to help support people working in the sector. A helpline service is provided by independent UK charity Help Musicians and supported by UK Music, The Musicians' Union, Incorporated Society of Musicians and BPI. This helpline offer guidance on how to raise and resolve issues and advice on rights and avenues for formal action.
Recommendations
Both the music industry and government need to act to solve the problem of misogyny, bullying, and sexual harassment in the music industry.
We call on the industry to:
We call on the government to act to:
Yours sincerely,
Graham Davies
CEO, The Ivors Academy of Music Creators
July 2022
[1] https://ivorsacademy.com/equality/2020-2022-equality-diversity-and-inclusion-action-plan/
[2] https://ivorsacademy.com/news/the-ivors-academy-signs-up-to-keychange-pledge/
[3] https://ivorsacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/The-Ivors-Academy-Governance-Guide.pdf
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/apr/12/artsfeatures.popandrock
[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/46f837da-9ffa-494d-94e7-c7ffb0781bea
[6] https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/call-from-music-industry-for-abuse-to-end
[7] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cassandra-Jones-14/publication/360901368_Bullying_and_Harassment_in_the_Music_Industry_Completely_entangled_in_its_fabric/links/629115ff8d19206823dfdcb4/Bullying-and-Harassment-in-the-Music-Industry-Completely-entangled-in-its-fabric.pdf
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid
[11] Ibid
[12] Ibid
[13] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dcms-sectors-economic-estimates-2019-employment
[14] https://www.ism.org/images/images/ISM_Dignity-at-work-April-2018.pdf
[15]https://musiciansunion.org.uk/MusiciansUnion/media/resource/Guides%20and%20reports/Equalities/MU-Sexual_harassement-report.pdf?ext=.pdf
[16] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cassandra-Jones-14/publication/360901368_Bullying_and_Harassment_in_the_Music_Industry_Completely_entangled_in_its_fabric/links/629115ff8d19206823dfdcb4/Bullying-and-Harassment-in-the-Music-Industry-Completely-entangled-in-its-fabric.pdf
[17] https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/home/dcms-prepares-to-tackle-bullying/5161006.article