Yourope Takes a Stand against discrimination

Yourope has announced the launch of ‘Take a Stand’, an initiative aimed at encouraging festival promoters to foster values of “social togetherness, understanding and tolerance for all cultures, genders, races, religions, sexual orientations, colours and origins”.

“After trying to convince the European Commission of the importance of festivals as cultural meeting points for years, but receiving nothing concrete in return,” the European festival association says it “decided to take matters into its own hands” at its first members’ meeting of 2017, at Eurosonic Noorderslag earlier this month.

“We are aiming to motivate people to be politically and socially more active, speak up for a peaceful dialogue, humanism, tolerance and understanding for each other,” says Lollapalooza Berlin festival director Fruzsina Szép, one of the driving forces behind the campaign.

According to Yourope, ‘taking a stand’ means:

• Vote: Get engaged, become part of a political party and/or vote on a local and
  national level
• Be active: Don’t be silent, join NGOs, support initiatives, sign petitions, raise your voice and spread the message on your social media platforms, stay open-minded
• Tolerate: Tolerate and respect all cultures and their values, support pro-active integration and an open dialogue where it’s needed
• Show solidarity: Show solidarity with minorities and help those who need help, take on voluntary work and take part in charity projects. Solidarity makes us stronger
• Learn: Discover the world, aim to get in contact with other cultures, listen to foreign music, watch foreign films, read books, taste the food of the world and try to understand other values and views than yours

Festivals and organisation interested in supporting Take a Stand should email Yourope’s general secretary, Christof Huber, at [email protected].

Other topics on the agenda included weather, live streaming, insurance, secondary ticketing and the growing, controversial practice of directly licensing performance royalties, which Yourope lawyer Ben Challis said should “not be the a battle that festivals are part of” but rather “a matter artists, their managers and their publishers need to take on with the collection societies”.

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