AUTUMN | FEATURE this terribly unfair and unbalanced working world and we shouldn ’ t be .
“ The problem is white festival organisers don ’ t know where to look and nor do people from those communities . There ’ s a lot of barriers . This year we learnt that we need a specialist person on site to break down these barriers .”
Glastonbury has a £ 50,000 Diversity Fund , of which £ 5,400 was used to enable nine Festival Lab students to work and learn at the festival this year . MacMeikan says that opportunities have been created for students to return to the event and build on the knowledge and experience gained .
The charity is also working with organisations such as the GLA and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to help fill available roles .
“ It ’ s created a whole level of organisation that we hadn ’ t foreseen , but it ’ s very positive ,” says MacMeikan .
Must be Love Team Love , the promoter of Bristol festivals including Love Saves The Day ( cap . 60,000 ) and The Downs ( 30,000 ), set up the Big Team CIC in 2019 to create opportunities for young people in the city who have historically been excluded from the festival industry .
Team Love producer Phoebe Holman says , “ Too often getting involved in festival production is very much about who you know , which we wanted to try and address . It felt like there were a lot of people within the festival industry who wanted to see a change , so Big Team was set up to try and actively start doing this .”
The CIC ( community interest company ), whose collaborators include Bristol 24 / 7 , ACE ( Aspiration Creation Elevation ), Bristol Festivals ,
“ Art and culture are for everyone , and as a sector we could do much better to represent the society it serves .”
Phoebe Holman
Glastonbury , St Pauls Carnival and Saffron – whose work specifically focuses on advancing gender equality in music tech – has also been creating opportunities at Team Love ’ s Forwards festival ( 60,000 ), which it co-promotes with AEG Presents .
Forwards was launched in 2022 and returned to Bristol Downs this month where it hosted artists including Erykah Badu , Bonobo and Aphex Twin . Team Love co-founder
Tom Paine says one of the aspects of Forwards that sets it apart from other festivals of its scale is its focus on working with the local community . Among the ways the festival is bringing in young people is by offering paid placements . Members of the Big Team network are given the chance to explore the festival site before it opens to the public , where they see the festival build and meet members of the core team .
Holman says the festival industry is a long way from having a truly diverse workforce but it is moving in the right direction , and Big Team has plans to considerably ramp up its activity next year .
“ The specific nature of festivals and the systems that have developed for working at them create barriers that make access really unequal ,” she says . “ This summer we have been doing a lot of work talking with both young people and festival employers to try
Forwards Festival
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