As you probably are aware, sustainability is a major focus of ours at The Green Gathering. For the most part this means our environmental and social justice stance, but beyond that it’s an ethos of ensuring that in everything we do, we’re thinking about the future, and showcasing what a better future could look like.
This is why we signed up to the Keychange Pledge in 2020. Keychange is a movement fighting to achieve a sustainable music industry by supporting underrepresented talent. The pledge asks organisations to commit to a 50:50 programme, where at least 50% of performances feature female or minority gender artists.
We’ve always been proud that behind the scenes, The Green Gathering ticks a lot of boxes. 50% of our directors and more than half our area coordinators are women, and we work hard on different areas of diversity such as access as well. Whilst we’ve still plenty more to do, committing to this pledge offered a structure and helped us achieve a leap forward in 2022.
So here are the stats. This year at The Green Gathering:
This means that for well over half of the programme we platformed people who are underrepresented in the music industry! We’re thrilled with this and the hard work of our Entertainment Coordinator, Ellie Weirdigan. We asked Ellie to explain more about how this happened. She said:
‘The Keychange Pledge came along at just the right time to embolden me to pursue a greater gender balance across our lineup. It’s something that means a lot to me: as a woman who works in male dominated industries, it’s important to use this privileged position to create opportunities for others, to showcase underrepresented talent, and to level the playing field in any way I can. I’m really grateful to Keychange for making noise about this issue across the industry, and helping us all demonstrate how easy it is to make change.
I’m incredibly proud of the lineup I put together this year, and the strides we’ve made towards greater diversity and balance across a number of characteristics including gender, ethnicity and sexuality – there’s still a long way to go, but we’re walking the road and I’m really proud of that!’
In our post-festival survey, the thing most people loved best this year was the music. As is often the case, doing the sustainable thing created a good time for us all.
Whilst there’s still plenty more to do, we’re ready to keep building and growing. As with everything, it takes a village – so if you’ve been to the Gathering and have ideas about what else we can do to improve representation, get in touch.
