Sad Grrrls Club: A DIY festival on a mission

With more and more attentionbeing paid to the number of all-male acts playing major festivals, as well as an increasing determination in the industry to drag into the light the high rates of harassment and assault on women and LGBTQIA people at festivals and music events, Australian music was well overdue for an event like Sad Grrrls Club.

“The motivation is always the same –to encourage gender diversity in Australian music through the values of safety, diversity and inclusivity,” says founder and booker Rachel Maria Cox.

The festival is designed to counter the spread of lopsided lineups by focusing on booking acts with at least one member who is female or gender diverse (includingnon-binary, gender fluid, gender non-conforming, agender and transgender performers).

“Sad Grrrls Club started back in early 2015 after a series of running jokes between my friends and I revealed that actually we were all pretty sick of being the only non-dudes on most of the lineups we played on,” Cox explains. “The more I read into it the more I realised that we weren’t alone and that for no apparent reason men outnumbered other genders in almost every area of music. It started as a small idea for a few shows that turned into a full tour and Sydney festival in 2015, then the Sydney/Melbourne Festival in 2016 and now in 2017 we’re running the festival in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.”

It’s clear Cox and their friends weren’t the only ones who were over predominantly male bills –they were flooded with requests from artists who wanted to play after announcing the first event’s lineup, to the point where SGC is this year asking for expressions of interest. (These close today – the form can be found here.)

TMN spoke to Cox about putting together a DIY festival, and what they’ve learned so far.

TMN: Who’s in your team? What are your backgrounds in the industry?

RMC: Sad Grrrls Club is almost entirely myself – the name is fairly misleading. My right-hand man is Courtney-Joy Fry who helped out with the festival last year and is helping again this year. For everything else I try and do as much of it myself as I can, and then ask for help if and when I need it.

My background is as a musician first and foremost. I’m a singer, songwriter, band manager, music teacher, music business administrator, and I run Sad Grrrls Club Records as well as booking, organising and promoting the festival. Courtney’s background is in media and communications –she has a Masters from UTS and currently works for Pedestrian.

What did you learn in the first couple of years of SGC?

• Make people sign a contract. The first year I got stung pretty bad by people pulling out of the festival last minute or simply not turning up.
• You’ll never please everyone but you can always strive to be better. Take feedback in your stride and use it to improve but know the difference between useful feedback and hate.
• That I need to balance my own personal wellbeing and work.
• Most importantly I learned I never want to stop doing something so rewarding!

What’s different about the process of putting this festival together compared to a more mainstream event?

The biggest difference I think is because we’re DIY and independent, there’s no corporate or financial imperative to make a profit from this event. If we can break even then I’m happy, and if we don’t but we put on an event that people love and feel safe at then I’m happy too.

I’d really like to get this to a point where it’s financially self-sustaining but because I’m the only person who’s taking the financial risk on this event, it means that I can focus entirely on getting the artists that I think are best suited to the event without worrying about who’s the most ‘in’ or who is going to sell the most tickets. It also means that the events have to stay on the small side which ensures we can keep them as safe as possible for attendees.

What other guiding principles do you haveas you put the festival together? What vibe are you trying to create on the day?

Safety, Inclusivity and Diversity are our key principles so that’s what I’m trying to aim for with the festival. This year I want to get more all-ages sections involved if we can, I want to have a more culturally diverse event and make sure the venues are more accessible for people with disabilities.

Something we’ve done the last few years is to make sure we have gender-inclusive bathrooms and a safer spaces invitation, and we can always expand on this to make sure people who might otherwise not go to festivals for safety or comfort reasons can come to Sad Grrrls Fest. This impacts the choices we make for venues, for artists, and how we try and set things up & lay things out on the day.

Why did you decide to ask for expressions of interest? Do you still approach bands you want as well, or is it all application-based?

Last year after the first line-up announcement was made I was inundated with requests and expressions of interest from bands who wanted to play. With the festival this year being bigger than before and with my other commitments taking up more and more of my time, I needed to make sure that the process of putting together the lineup was as efficient as possible.

Putting together a form for artists (or their managers or agents) to fill out meant that we can collate all the information we need in one place and it cuts out a lot of the back and forth of approaching bands who either aren’t interested, aren’t available, or are out of our price range. Because this is a hobby that I fit in as well as full-time work and being in a band, efficiency is key!

What we’ve also done is sent the application link out to a lot of bands and managers/agents to get as many applications to see if we can get some artists that we were keen to chase and it seems to be striking a nice balance between finding the artists I was after and hearing from new bands.

How do you think mostly male lineups – or even all-male ones like the infamous Days Like This one this year – happen? Is there any excuse, or can they always try harder?

I think it just shows where diversity is not a priority. I can understand how you can chase the big acts that aren’t all-male, and they’re not available, and so then the priority becomes finding an act who will pull a crowd to cover costs and make a profit rather than trying to prioritise diversity.

We’re DIY and we’re small and it’s not a commercial venture so we’re in the position where diversity can be a priority for us but I think all bookers need to realise that diversity can be profitable too!