40 new festivals and conferences join Keychange

Liverpool Sound City 2018

Friday 4th to Sunday 6th May 2018
various city centre venues, Liverpool, Merseyside, England
£55

Daily capacity: 25,000

Keychange is an international initiative led by PRS Foundation which empowers women to transform the future of the music industry and encourages festivals to achieve or maintain a 50:50 gender balance by 2022. By bringing together like-minded festivals and conference programmers committed to positive action, Keychange aims to create a much needed long-term change in live music and beyond.

PRS Foundation will host a Keychange event at Liverpool Sound City tomorrow (4th May 2018) to announce that a further 40 festivals will be joining the Keychange pledge to achieve or maintain a 50/50 gender balance across their festivals by 2022 (including live line-ups, conferences and commissions). In addition, a Keychange Inspiration Award will be presented to music and arts pioneer Jayne Casey best known for her involvement in the Liverpool punk and new wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s, with Big in Japan, Pink Military and Pink Industry.

The 40 new festivals joining the Keychange pledge are:
AMP Lost & Found (Malta) / AIM Music Connected and Indie Con (UK) / Alínæ Lumr (Germany) / Bestival - Temple Stage (UK) / Black Deer Festival (UK) / Brainchild Festival (UK) / Brighton Music Conference (UK) / B-Sides Festival (Switzerland) / Bushstock (UK) / Cambridge Folk Festival (UK) / Camp Wavelength (Canada) / Celtic Connections (UK) / EFG London Jazz Festival (UK) / Fjellparkfestivalen (Norway) / Folk Alliance International (USA) / Folk On The Dock (UK) / Glasgow International Jazz Festival (UK) / Halifax Pop Explosion (Canada) / Hull Jazz Festival (UK) / Jazzkaar (Estonia) / Jeunes Talents (France) / Looe Music Festival (UK) / Lisbon International Music Network (Portugal) / Live At Heart (Sweden) / Long Division Festival (UK) / MUSEXPO (USA) / New Music Biennial (UK) / Northern Lights Festival Boréal (Canada) / Nova Scotia Music Week (Canada) / Pete The Monkey (France) / Philadelphia Folk Festival (USA) / Relevance Festival (Denmark) / Riverfest Elora (Canada) / Sørveiv (Norway) / Subtropikal Festival (Brasil) / Unconference (UK) / VUT Indie Days (Germany) / Wavelength Winter Festival (Canada) / Wood Festival (UK) / XpoNorth (UK)

This follows the gender balance commitment made in February 2018 by 45 international music festivals and conferences including existing Keychange partners Reeperbahn Festival (Germany), BIME (Spain), Iceland Airwaves, Way Out West (Sweden), Musikcentrum Sweden, Tallinn Music Week (Estonia), and MUTEK (Canada) and new UK Keychange festival partner Liverpool Sound City.

Vanessa Reed, CEO of PRS Foundation, said: “We’re thrilled that Liverpool Sound City has joined the Keychange partnership and is hosting an event which celebrates the fact that another 40 festivals have joined since we launched at Canada House a few months ago. It’s been hugely encouraging to hear from such a broad range of independent music events who recognise the benefits of championing more female artists across their stages. Congratulations also to arts and music pioneer, Jayne Casey, our latest Keychange Inspiration award winner. I’m sure that the industry innovators and artists we’re supporting through the Keychange talent development programme will be inspired by people like Jayne. She demonstrated the importance of women’s contribution to music at a time when the gender gap was even greater than it is now.”

Rebecca Stewart of Cambridge Folk Festival added: “Cambridge Folk Festival is delighted to be part of the Keychange initiative, especially as we currently aim for a 50:50 balance on the line-up and have done so for a number of years. We want to be held up as a shining example that this is possible and that if a Folk Festival can do it, then others can too. We hope it will inspire women to expect to be up there with the best and to keep fighting. And, as we are predominately a female managed festival, we want to show that women are as successful behind the scenes as well."

On presenting the Keychange Inspiration award to Jayne Casey, Becky Ayres, Chief Operating Officer of Liverpool Sound City, said: "Jayne Casey is a true unsung hero, a rebel and auteur who has pioneered musical and cultural change in the North for decades and has been behind some of the biggest phenomena in recent times, such as Eric’s and Cream. She was one of the only, if not the only woman in Liverpool creating and curating amazing art in a landscape dominated by men for so many years and she is inspiring to me not only for what she has achieved, but for her incredible passion and the fact that she always looks forward and embraces every generation and the zeitgeist that comes forward. We’re really lucky to have her in Liverpool to look up to."

For more information on Keychange please see here.

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