Good news for Keychange as EU pledges €1.4m
Gender balance initiative Keychange has received €1.4 million in funding from the European Union’s Creative Europe programme.
Launched in 2017 by music charity PRS Foundation, over 250 music organisations and festivals have signed up to the Keychange pledge to achieve gender-balanced line-ups by 2022.
With the new funding, the programme is ready to enter into its second phase, which will span from September 2019 to 2023.
Details of ‘Keychange 2.0’ will be presented at Reeperbahn festival by the event’s chief executive and Keychange co-founder Alexander Schultz, along with programme ambassadors Kate Nash and Barbara Gessler of the European Commission on Thursday 19 September.
Reeperbahn, which takes place form 18 to 21 September in Hamburg, Germany, will lead the next phase of Keychange, working closely with PRS Foundation, Sweden’s Musikcentrum Öst, Iceland Airwaves, Tallinn Music Week / Shiftworks in Estonia and BIME Festival in Spain.
“The transformative power of Keychange is visible and increasing”
New partners include Oslo World festival in Norway and the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (SACEM) in France.
Christina Schäfers, head of programming at Reeperbahn and project lead for Keychange, comments: “The transformative power of Keychange is visible and increasing. Within the next four years we will focus on concrete aims and measures to keep on creating a better, more inclusive music industry.
“Since culture has always been a source of inspiration for necessary change, we look forward to inspiring and be part of the future of our society.”
In November 2018, Keychange released its manifesto for change at the European Parliament in Brussels, with the aim of increasing the representation of marginalised genders in the music industry.
Primavera Sound and Iceland Airwaves are among the music festivals to have already fulfilled their Keychange pledge.
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Assomusica present award to MEP Silvia Costa
Assomusica, the Italian association of concert producers and organisers, has presented Silvia Costa, member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture, with an award to commemorate her “commitment, passion and dedication to music”. The award, a microphone encased in a glass bottle, represents the organisation’s will to voice the demands of the music industry.
Costa is a backer of the Creative Europe Programme. Last month, the programme published its new Agenda for Culture for 2021-2027, a look at what the creative industries will look like in a post-Brexit EU. Whilst largely in support of this, Assomusica hope that by commemorating Costa’s continued championing of the music industry within the EU, it will encourage her to take their proposed improvements on the agenda to parliament.
“We need a European music programme, with a budget proportionate to the economic, social and cultural contribution that this social and cultural form of art offers to the community.”
Assomusica chairman, Vincenzo Spera, who presented Costa with the award, has highlighted the improvements that need to be made to the European music sector and the parliament’s support of it. They include the improvement of scouting activities and an establishment of an observatory for gathering music sector-related data and the necessity for the sector to have access to financial resources to promote and produce the internationalisation of music.
He says: “The whole industry is calling on all EU institutions to support and strengthen the idea of dedicating specific programming to the music sector.
“We need a European music programme, with a budget proportionate to the economic, social and cultural contribution that this social and cultural form of art offers to the community. Only through strong support from the European Community, we will be able to promote creativity and innovation, safeguard and expand the diversity of European music.”
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