The music industry is home to its fair share of unfortunate and unseemly incidents at gigs and festivals. Obviously, this is one of the areas where we all need to work harder and smarter to engender a safe and enjoyable atmosphere for everyone, from artists, crew and staff to show-goers and industry people.
Moderated by Bakehouse Studios co-owner and SLAM co-founder Helen Marcou, the audience at BIGSOUND heard from Secret Service managing director Stacey Piggott, Mellum PR director and founder Udaravi Widanapathirana and LISTEN co-ordinator Elspeth Scrine. Here's a little bit about what they had to say.
"The basis of all these points is equality." — Helen Marcou
"We have preventative measures … None of these things made a difference to that happening on site. The only thing that would have made a difference is those two guys not doing that.” — Stacey Piggott, on Falls Festival sexual assault incidents.
"You would never walk into a bank and yell at someone, ‘Show us your tits!’. Culturally, we need to start having that conversation." — Stacey Piggott, regarding tolerance of antisocial behaviours in the music industry.
"We need to separate tradition." — Uda Widanapathirana, on opening up scenes and environments.
"You can’t be what you can’t see." — Helen Marcou
"You need to understand what are the issues within the demographic you’re promoting." — Uda Widanapathirana
"What we didn’t want to do is to come down the microphone, yelling at people that 'you’re being a dickhead'." — Stacey Piggott
"The bandwagon of [diversity] is so full that the wheels are busting off. We need people to jump off it and start pushing behind it." — Stacey Piggott
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