Spain’s MIM appoints new board of directors
Spanish association Women in the Music Industry (Mujeres de la Industria de la Música – MIM) has appointed a new board of directors on the third year from its inauguration.
Carmen Zapata, manager of the Catalan Concert Venues Association (Associació de Sales de Concerts de Catalunya), will stay on as MIM president.
Primavera Pro director Almudena Heredero takes on the role of vice president and treasurer, with Patricia Gabeiras, founder of law firm Gabeiras & Associates, will serve as secretary.
Additional new board members are Ticketmaster’s Celia Carrillo, Anxela Baltar of punk two-piece Bala and I Wanna management, Herminia Martínez of Palosanto agency, Maca Arena of Spanish promoters’ organisation APMusicales, Mar Rojo, who programmes Madrid venue El Sol, and Violeta Hernández, founder of live agency La Suite.
Launched in 2016, MIM provides a platform for female music professionals to gain more visibility and works on ways to address the gender imbalance within all sectors of the industry. MIM was last year’s recipient of Primavera Sound’s Primavera Award.
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Primavera Pro gets untamed with Insumisas
Primavera Sound has partnered with Spanish association Women in the Music Industry (MIM) to launch Insumisas, a new strand of its industry facing Primavera Pro event focused on the role of women in music, culture and politics in increasingly “conservative times”.
Insumisas (Spanish for “Untamed”) will take place on Thursday 30 May, on the second day of the Barcelona convention/festival, and serves to open “debate about the dissemination of feminist thinking in the cultural domain”, according to organisers.
Primavera Sound awarded MIM (Mujeres de la Industria de la Música) its Primavera Award in 2018, in recognition of its work to promote gender equality in the Spanish music industry, and Insumisas cements the relationship between the two parties. The festival is a signatory to the Keychange declaration, and its 2019 line-up is gender-balanced, with at least as many female as male performers.
Insumisas comprises two roundtable discussions. The first, ‘Feminism, politics and culture: separate battles?’, tackles class differences, cultural segregation and the ‘patriarchy’, as well as the role of women in societal conflicts, while ‘All-female showcases: a necessity or a double-edged sword?’ asks whether ‘safe spaces’ for women are a positive development – or an excuse for event organisers to exclude females from the main programme.
Primavera Pro, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, takes place alongside Primavera Sound from 29 May to 2 June 2019. Tame Impala, Solange and Cardi B headline Primavera Sound 2019, which runs from 30 May to 1 June at Parc del Forum in Barcelona.
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Women in the Music Industry to receive Primavera Award
Mujeres de la Industria de la Música (MIM), a Spanish association set up to raise the visibility of women working in music, is to receive the Primavera Award at Primavera Sound 2018, in recognition of its work to promote gender equality in the music industry.
Previous winners of the award, first presented at Primavera Sound 2014, include ITB co-founder Barry Dickins, online music magazine Pitchfork and Danish festival Roskilde.
Commenting on the decision to award the 2018 prize to Mujeres de la Industria de la Música (Women in the Music Industry), Primavera Pro director Almudena Heredero explains: “MIM does not work only by complaining about and denouncing situations of inequality, but dedicates its efforts to proactive work – to finding ways of making projects managed by women viable and working on in integrating them into the music scene, not only on stage, but in all sectors, including […] those which are apparently the most inaccessible, such as technical and programming jobs.”
“We see this award as a homage to all the years of work by many, many women in the music industry who have found themselves very isolated in a predominantly masculine sector”
MIM was established in 2016, and now has around 240 members. It produces training courses, studies and reports and organises collaborations “that help to ensure that the [role] of women in music is not limited to their being objects of desire or the butt of contempt in song lyrics”, according to Primavera.
MIM chair Carmen Zapata (pictured), who is also manager of the Catalonian Concert Venues Association (ASACC), says: “At MIM we are very happy to receive the Primavera Award, which we see as a homage to all the years of work by many, many women in the music industry who have found themselves very isolated in a predominantly masculine sector, and who have fought, and are still fighting, for equality.”
The Primavera Award 2018 will be presented at Primavera Pro in Barcelona on 30 May.
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