Sweethearts Foundation stages all-female Sweetfest 2021

Sweethearts Foundation, a not for profit organisation with the mission of empowering young women in music, is staging Sweetfest 2021.

It is held on May 30 at Little Malop Street in the Geelong CBD, Victoria.

Aside from live music from national and local female artists on four stages, there will be industry workshops and Q&A panels for attendees.

The event is headlined by Alex Lahey with a bill that includes Hayley Mary, Emma Donovan & The Putbacks, Sweethearts Ebony and The Dilemmas, Fulton Street, Cry Baby, Sirens, Rach Brennan, Libby Steel, Ella Sweeney, Younghearts, Mink Mila, Kim Cooper, Lique, Andrea Robertson, Carly Robertson, Hassall, Operation Karma and Brunette Red Dress.

Sweetfest is another element of the foundation’s work since being set up in 2000.

The band had been formed 10 years before by Ross Lipson, a science teacher at Matthew Flinders College who played sax and oboe, and began the band as an after-school initiative to provide life skills to help students enter the music industry.

It expanded to players outside Matthew Flinders and its success led him and colleague Rick McLean to develop a certificate IV qualification in music for Victorian secondary students.

The Sweethearts’ lineup of 25 to 30 young women changes each year.

A 13-part ABC-TV documentary Heart and Soul in 2013 on the band’s journey saw how they played festivals as Woodford Folk, Queenscliff Music and the Port Fairy Music Festival.

Five European tours included sets at festivals as Montreux Jazz in Switzerland, Italy’s Porretta Soul and France’s Jazz a Vienne, along with a 2014 trek through the United States.

When Lipson succumbed to cancer in 2014 at 57 – after a remarkable life where his love for adventure saw him sail for three years along the East Coast and teach in villages in New Guinea and Alaska— Queenscliff Music created a perpetual award in his name to recognise musicians.