Transformative Trajectories 2: "BlueSky" Ideas to create new horizons for women in the music industry.

What would this new transformative trajectory look like for women in music? What are the practical solutions to creating the means to succeed for women who have a more complex and sometimes scattered work/life pattern than men?

Now I enter a realm of vision and imagination. These ideas are just my own and would no doubt need refining and solidifying in real life.

I envisage a future where women could use their talents fully and blossom . They could go to a number of places for support. Grant funding organisations will have addressed the questions and issues raised in the first of these two blogs (Transformative Trajectory 1 and 2) , so there would be streamlined initiatives and ring fenced grant funding to break through these myriad barriers faced by women. It would not be a one size fits all approach as the shape and challenges of women’s lives are more diverse than their male counter parts.

I also envisage the following as a model for women involved in music:

There could be a panel- or several panels of people- who cross all working aspects of music: other singer songwriters, producers, engineers, record labels, PR people, radio, managers, festival and venue owners, synch people …..all walks of the industry. There also could be professionals who are philanthropists and business people who have an interest in the arts and wish to support it either financially or through their own innovative skillsets and advice.

This is a connection that could really be fostered as the arts could benefit from fluid innovative business thinking alongside patronage and funding. The businesses themselves get a combination of great PR through music projects and perhaps also have creative team building programmes delivered to their staff from the musicians themselves which would make their workplaces more cohesive, creative and connected. This women’s development panel would operate as a nationwide initiative and would work to also overcome the boundaries created by geography.

Women could present their work, ambitions and their training needs and receive direct and ongoing mentorship, training and support which becomes a ladder to growth and success. They could be teamed up with a mentor, training opportunities and networking opportunities and developing work opportunities. It would be a kindlier, artistic, musical version of Dragon’s Den! ( But not hopefully on tv). Women could approach them at all points of their career. More help needs to be given to women who just possess raw talent and are near the beginning of their journey as this is the most difficult part of development because there is not a body of people who yet believe in the viability of this emerging talent. Getting off the ground is one of the hardest things.

This person centred approach allows space for the individual challenges, needs and talent to be considered. This more direct and grassroots approach means that change/development would be more effective and each case would be slightly different allowing for flexibility creating targeted growth and support. I believe this decentralised, person centred, grass roots approach would be an effective tool for rapid change. Training or support is different from person to person as we all have different combinations of skillsets.

These ideas and questions take time to be explored and would require us to then work from that vision back to where we are now . We would need to work out what goals, what actions and what systems we put in place to allow that vision to go from a “blue sky idea “ to a practical working reality. How it forms may end up being slightly different and perhaps modified by the emerging on- the -ground reality we exist in. We are in a society that has many pressures on it and many aspects of potential change. But, vision and out of the box thinking followed by connectivity and working out new modalities will take us a long way towards such an emergent new vision.