Bringing balance to the fore
Last month, Sage Gateshead signed a pledge to have a 50:50 gender balance in all of our commissioning, our associate artists and our festivals. In doing this, we joined hundreds of other organisations as part of Keychange, an international movement led by the PRS Foundation to increase gender balance in the music industry. During the same week we signed the pledge, I also watched two operas containing some of the most beautiful music ever written – Mozart's Così fan tutte and Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen – both composed by men some time ago and each with gender politics which are outdated to say the least. Also last week, Sage Gateshead opened its second Young People's Festival and over 1,000 young people – boys and girls in equal numbers – raised the roof of our building with their varied and imaginative music-making. They performed hip-hop, jazz, folk, classical and DJed, a mix of music which reflects one of Sage Gateshead's core principles – all genres have equal status for us.
I have always been cautious of targets and quotas, and I am still of the view that we are at risk of oversimplifying complicated and wide-ranging matters. No woman wants to be promoted on the basis of her gender. Nor do I want to stop hearing Mozart or Janáček's glorious musical storytelling. However, I also think about the potential in 1,000 young people performing music, some of whom migh want to pursue it as a career, and others as a skill, an interest, a part of life, building meaning, identity, and resilience. However, as the saying goes, if you can't see it, it's harder to be it. We owe it to our young people to get balance in our programmes and on our stages, rather than only showing 500 out of 1,000 young people what is possible.
Much has been achieved in recent years, but there is still some way to go. Take the following three sets of numbers: Firstly, in a survey of 15 orchestras across the world, promoting 1,500 concerts with 4,000 pieces of music this season, only 142 were composed by women – that's 92% of concerts presenting works only by male composers. Secondly, our major music companies declared a 30% gender pay gap. And thirdly, last season 76% of artists on festival stages in the USA were men. That's all in 2019, not 1919!
So, while we won't ignore the complexities in this matter, we decided to set ourselves a challenge at Sage Gateshead – to find new ways of exploring what has gone before and to change what's to come. What, after all, are cultural institutions for but to be progressive, to widen the net. We are civic organisations – for and of our communities. Until we represent all musicians we won't be able to look young people in the eye.
More information about the initiative can be found at keychange.eu.
- Abigail Pogson
