A Festival Organizer’s Guide to Cultivating Inclusive Music Festival Lineups
In recent years, the call for diversity and inclusion within the festival industry has echoed louder than ever before. As music festivals continue to be celebrated as vibrant hubs of culture and expression, there's an increasing need to diversify their lineups, ensuring representation across various genres, backgrounds, and cultures. Even with this being the reality, often times many programmers still “play it safe” – booking only the diverse acts that have cracked into the charts. Jabari Johnson of Colors Worldwide confirms that “most festivals are all about mitigating risk so talent bookers really aren't incentivized to take risks and do things that aren't "proven successes. This is why you see a lot of festival lineups looking very similar to one another.”
Embracing diversity not only enriches the festival experience but also resonates positively with attendees, fostering a sense of belonging and unity. With intention and strategy, festival organizers can create environments that showcase diversity authentically and equally:
Partner with Diversity-Focused Organizations: Collaborate with organizations and collectives that specialize in promoting diversity in music and the arts. These partnerships can offer connections to a broader pool of diverse artists and facilitate meaningful cultural exchanges. Coachella’s partnership with GV Black on Party in My Living Room was an exceptional display of how impactful and authentic these types of partnerships can be.
Cultivate Emerging Talent: Provide opportunities for emerging artists from diverse backgrounds to showcase their talents. Initiatives like talent contests, open mic sessions, and artist development programs can unearth hidden gems and diversify festival lineups organically. Jabari suggests to “just pay attention to what's hot in music now. This upcoming generation of musicians is extremely diverse in all facets, so if you have your pulse on what's going on in culture you'll see that diversity is everywhere.”
Tap Into Artist Knowledge: Festival programmers can leverage the connections and insights of currently booked artists and DJs to foster diverse programming. Collaborating with artists can help uncover hidden talents and artists from diverse backgrounds that align with the festival's ethos. Encouraging headliners and featured acts to recommend supporting acts or emerging artists they admire, particularly those representing underrepresented communities or unique styles, can significantly contribute to diversifying the lineup. Festival programmers can collaborate with booked artists to co-create stages or segments that celebrate cultural diversity, providing a platform for artists to showcase their artistry and amplify voices that might otherwise go unheard. DJ/Producer and Purveyor Underground Owner, Demuir, views social media as a key discovery technique to finding talent: “Don’t focus on [artists’] followers as a key metric, rather, listen to the music and see who else is playing it. That should be an easy way to connect the dots in deciding what an artist can offer your audience,” states Demuir.
Community Engagement and Feedback: Actively seek input from the festival community to understand their musical preferences and interests. Surveys, polls, and direct engagement with key communities can provide valuable insights into the kind of diverse acts attendees wish to see. Companies like Tradable Bits help organizers collect this first party fan data to help ascertain current trends among the community.
Obviously, achieving proper diversity within a festival lineup is deeper than just being a successful researcher. When festival organizers take care to first and foremost ensure they are hiring diverse employees across the company, lineup diversification can and will flow naturally.
