A rainy caravan park on the south coast of England might seem an unlikely place to make a feminist statement. But this weekend, at Sandford holiday park in Poole, an uprising of women in music took place with Hear Her festival, an all-female line-up of artists from across a spectrum of folk, pop and indie rock.
Backed by Diva magazine, the event was co-curated by musician KT Tunstall and headlined by Manchester synth-disco artist Shura and Mercury-nominated Northern Irish singer-songwriter Soak. As well as featuring only female-identifying acts, Hear Her was entirely curated and managed by women (and had female trainee sound engineers from the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts learning the ropes on the sound desk).
Actress, musician, and Diva music editor Heather Peace founded Hear Her in 2018 as a response to what she saw as a lack of platforms for emerging female artists. “The festival line-up balance, it’s appalling,” she said.
Since music blog Crack in the Road first doctored a Reading and Leeds poster in 2015, it is now commonplace to see festival line-up announcements on social media edited to erase the men, revealing how few women have been booked. A particularly stark example of this came in 2018, when Lily Allen shared a Wireless poster revealing that the London festival had only booked three women. Analysis by the BBC found that 77% of acts at the UK’s nine biggest festivals in 2018 were men.
Peace points to the PRS Foundation’s Keychange initiative – under which many festivals have pledged to have a 50-50 gender split by 2020 – as one beacon of hope. She also notes that this year’s Glastonbury line-up boasted 42% female performers (and outside the UK, Spain’s Primavera Sound achieved 50-50).
The fact that this shift is happening, in her opinion, is even more reason to have a boutique all-female event like Hear Her – because bigger festivals are now “actively looking for female artists”.
Emily Eavis was recently quoted as saying that whilst she would love to book women in the top slots at Glastonbury, “the pool isn’t big enough … Everyone’s hungry for women, but they’re just not there.”
Northern Irish artist Soak, who played her first headline festival slot for Hear Her this weekend, disagrees that there aren’t women available to fill those main stage spots. “I would argue that there are those people, but they’re not being given … the good slots at festivals in order to build their fanbase and their stagecraft. There’s definitely not enough nurturing being put into women.
“I think [festival bookers] need to take more of a chance, and they need to invest. Women are very cast aside. But the acts are there.”
Margate-based synth-pop artist Lanta, who also played on Saturday at Hear Her, agrees. “We have to really recognise that the reason why female-led bands and artists aren’t being perceived as doing well enough is that they have to be let through by the gatekeepers,” she says. “I don’t think there’s one solution to such a complex situation. I do think accountability has to rest a bit with festivals. Because I’ve discovered so many amazing bands at festivals.”
Peace has no ambitions to make Hear Her bigger than its current capacity of under 1,000 people; “I like the small, safe space feel. There’s a real feeling of kindness in the room.” But she does hope that it can create a ripple effect that goes beyond Sandford. “I just want Hear Her to become a space where the bigger festivals might look at what we’re promoting, and take them to the next level.”
Among the predominantly female and LGBTQ crowd, that kindness was palpable at the weekend. “It’s been really lovely,” said 31-year-old Mo, a festival attendee from Edinburgh. “There’s not enough spaces that are focused on women in music and inclusive. I miss lesbian nights and queer, women-focused events – there’s been a bit of a dearth of that.”
In the future, when line-ups generally are more balanced, Peace says she would love to welcome men to play at Hear Her festival, too. For now, the all-female line-up is a necessary tool for change.
“It’s interesting that an all-female bill is such a novelty,” says Soak. “It should just be like, ‘Oh, cool.’ I hope more of it happens and it shows just how well you can pull off a festival with all-female line-ups. And hopefully in the future, we get to the point where it’s just a festival, and it’s not a noticeable statistic.”
