Yourope releases diversity and inclusion toolset

Yourope has developed and released the 3F Diversity & Inclusion Toolset for the European festival sector.

The toolset, which is free to use for any festival or cultural event, is a curated collection of resources that can help festival organisers make their event more diverse and inclusive for fans, artists and staff.

It forms part of the European festival association’s three-year project, Future-Fit Festivals (3F). Resources include guides, tests, checklists, interviews, databases, other toolkits, roadmaps, reports, games and action plans.

Chapters are dedicated to: Accessibility & Inclusion, Anti-Racism Work & Diversity, Gender & Sexual Equity, Consciousness & Responsibility, Allyship and good-practice stories. The team has also assembled a glossary. In addition, there is a ‘Diversity Mission Statement’ that festivals are free to copy and adapt to their own event. The toolset can be found here.

“When we talk to festival organisers about diversity at their events, we sometimes hear that they would like to do more, but they don’t know where to start. They’re afraid of doing something wrong, saying the wrong thing, and the potential backlash that might cause, so they don’t touch the topic,” says Yourope’s Katharina Weber, contributor and editor of the toolset.

“If your festival is already doing great, but you’d like to get inspiration and ideas to do even better, this is for you”

“With this toolset, we give festival organisers a chance to fight this insecurity. It’s a place to start their diversity journey. Our project team did the research and assessed many resources on accessible, diverse and equal events, so festival organisers don’t have to do it. On top, we hope to inspire them with our stories about good-practice examples from festivals that show how more diversity and inclusion can be achieved.”

The toolset is the result of a collaboration of experts from the Yourope network such as Roskilde Festival (DK), Primavera Sound (ES), Flow Festival (FI), Höme – Für Festivals (DE), Open’er Festival (PL) and OpenAir St.Gallen (CH), supported by an advisory board of external experts from different countries and backgrounds. Their tasks were to check the team’s unconscious biases and to ensure that the texts are representative of the groups of people this toolset is dedicated to.

“Something stuck with me after a short conversation with the awareness team at Reeperbahn Festival in 2023,” adds Yourope board member Marta Pallarès, head of press at Primavera Sound and co-developer of the toolset. “They handed me a little sticker, a perfect form of a circle made with these words: ‘It’s a process it’s a process it’s a process.’ And indeed, making our festivals better, safer, more diverse and more inclusive is a process: the more you know, the more you realise the things you still don’t.

“And if you are just getting introduced to these concepts, finding where to start can feel overwhelming, even if you might sense that the moment to begin is now. This is the main goal of our toolset: if your festival is already doing great, but you’d like to get inspiration and ideas to do even better, this is for you. And if you want to start somewhere but you don’t know how, this is for you as well.”

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