Over 100 festivals join Keychange pledge to tackle gender inequality on line-ups and in the music industry

Over 100 festivals have joined the Keychange pledge, which encourages “festivals to sign up to a 50:50 gender balance pledge by 2022,” according to the campaign’s website.

Announced back in February, when 45 major international music festivals signed up for the new initiative, Keychange aims to tackle gender inequality on festival line-ups by investing in and supporting emerging female identifying and non-binary talent. Led by PRS Foundation, a leading new music and talent development organization in the UK, Keychange recently welcomed a host of new festivals to the pledge including: Big Day Out (UK), Field Maneuvers (UK), JazzFest Berlin (Germany), Rifflandia (Canada), MaMA Festival (France), Africa Oyé (UK), Oxjam Camden (UK) and more. They join previously announced festival partners Liverpool International Music Festival, MUTEK, Pop-Kultur, Canadian Music Week and BBC Proms.

Speaking at a recent Keychange panel at A2IM Indie Music Week in New York, PRS Foundation CEO Vanessa Reed said, “We’re thrilled that just 9 months after the launch of Keychange, over 100 festivals have now pledged to reach a 50-50 gender balance by 2022. It’s also important that this initiative is now being debated in the US where A2IM Indie Music Week hosted a Keychange discussion involving our partners from Canada and Reeperbahn Festival. I hope this milestone will encourage others to join in with this positive and increasingly popular movement for change.”

In other recent festival news, more than 60 UK festivals have agreed to ban plastic glitter from their events this summer in a bid to avoid damaging the local environment.

Check out a full list of festivals that have signed up for the Keychange pledge on the official website.

Learn more about the Keychange initiative and PRS Foundation.

Photo Credit: Eva Rinaldi Photography via Flickr. Creative Commons license.