My One Woman Protest
The music industry has an accountability crisis.
Two years ago the heart and ground-breaking “Raising Their Voices” (© MAPM Consulting 2022) Report into Sexual Harm, Sexual Harassment and Systemic Discrimination in the Contemporary Music Industry with its seventeen recommendations for reform was published. It was independently researched and informed by the evidence of 1,600 people. It holds a lot of collective trauma, and hope.
An inertia has set in now. It is two years since a roll call of 112 Australian Music Industry companies and organisations published a joint statement to acknowledge the harm documented by the Review, and said “we are sorry.”
An apology is nice but will not rectify ongoing systemic failures that continue to ensure workplaces are unsafe in a complex national sector and especially in my home state — Queensland.
There is a clear through line between the independent Raising Their Voices Report, the Australian Government’s Revive Cultural Policy 2023 and with the legislation of Creative Workplaces a mandate in place for Creative Australia (formerly Australia Council).
The cultural policy has provided a pipeline of public funding for : further research and workforce capability building (Creative Workplaces); awards and conferences (AWMAs) and training and crisis support (Support Act). And still . . . nothing has moved the needle on the Raising Their Voices report recommendations. There is no demonstration of accountability in practice, or measurable improvement of safer, more respectful workplaces for women and gender expansive folks in the Australian music industry.
It appears creating safe spaces for the hard, challenging and triggering conversations that the Raising Their Voices report demands is beyond the capability of those funded to produce conferences and events. The topic has been either risk managed as ‘off limits’, performatively presented with scant concern for anyone other than a funding agenda or framed in the context of ‘cancel culture’.
Meanwhile, I’ve provided community care for those in my local music community living in my postcode. Most recently women who attended the diabolical AWMAs Brotherhood for the Sisterhood panel in Brisbane. Read the recap here.
The outcome of this reprehensible panel highlighted the enormity of the task in creating change — including for the people who are ostensibly tasked with leading that change.
I am fed up.
ONE WOMAN PROTEST
This week I came down to Gadigal Country for SXSW Sydney to quench my thirst for new ideas, provocations and culture.
After the AWMA’s trainwreck of a panel, that was subsequently ‘crisis comm-ed’ by the conference producers and the misogynist — one SXSW panel topic immediately got my attention “Cancelled? A Crisis PR firedrill.”
I’ve become increasingly aware that the Queensland music industry is deploying paid so-called ‘crisis communication professionals’ to manage perceptions of ‘crises’ and any reputational damage on individuals and/or organisations including when caused by their own problematic behaviour.
I wanted to know — how do crisis communication strategies create ANY meaningful change when actual harm has been caused? Is it the case that paid professional “crisis comms” enable perpetrators of harm to avoid consequences or to be held to account for their behaviour? Are crisis comms companies the ‘ambulance chasers’ of the music media? How could I find the courage to ask any of these questions?
In the week leading up to the conference panel I reflected deeply on my values and why I even bother or care anymore. I thought about the activists and artists that have shaped my understanding of the world. Those who put their voices, hearts and physical bodies in the line of fire for their values and social change all the time.
As a now grey-haired middle aged woman that walked away from a career in the music industry — I challenged myself, what can I actually do anymore when the industry itself does not want to hold itself to account? What difference would it make when I have already been excluded, minimised, trivialised and gossipped about by the leaders of the Queensland Music Industry as a ‘difficult, noisy feminist’?
I do believe it is my right to ask questions of transparency and accountability for the use of public funds that impact culture.
I believe it is important to use my power and privilege to raise the voices of so many without a voice, power and resources.
I believe when in spaces with a proximity to power I have a responsibility to represent the many women, First Nations, LGBTQI+ people who have been, and continue to be, harmed by the people and organisations in the music industry ?
In that room at the Sydney Convention Centre I was a proxy for all those at the AWMAs that had been (re)traumatised when hearing the outrageously antiquated and misogynistic comments made by Brian “Smash” Cladhil and subsequent shock when the facilitator created more airspace for the men on the panel whilst shutting the women down.
Inspired by performing artists, climate activists and Jane Fonda I started to think about my own physical body in that sterile ICC conference room on Thursday. What could I do with my body, not my voice?
I went to the newsagent, bought some cardboard and sharpies and channelled my best Year 5 Social Studies skills. I made a protest poster.
Music industry events remain extremely psychologically unsafe spaces for me. I was unsure, right until the last 2 minutes of the panel discussion if I was going to go through with it.
Not one of the music panelists used the word ‘accountability’ in a one hour conversation and issues of gender and race were tiptoed around. Tips and strategies were shared for when an artist (or company) is called out or investigated by the media : watch; ignore; minimise; distract; prepare statements; compromise your morals; say nothing and hope that the media cycle moves on, quickly.
As the panel wound out I felt completely calm, stood up and showed everyone in that room my sign and message.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Definition : the obligation to accept responsibility and consequences (to take account) for one’s own actions.
How to be accountable when you have done something unacceptable to the broader community standards and expectations :
· reach out to, and work with, the person/s who have put themselves out on a limb by calling the problematic behaviour out.
· ask, listen and understand how they want the harm repaired.
· ask, listen and understand how they want change to be rolled out.
· be transparent and accountable by sharing your experience and learnings with the wider music industry and community.
You cannot pay a crisis communications ‘expert’ to do the work of repairing harm for you. It is your work to do, it will be hard.
Do more than say you are sorry with a well wordsmithed apology.
Cop the consequences.
Take responsibility.
Do the inner work.
Repair the harm.
Be transparent with the broader community.
Personal thanks to my network of family, friends and colleagues who supported me before, during and after my one woman protest.
I was going to bin the sign in the hotel before I flew back to Brisbane when my son and daughter reminded me — as a family we have always marched and protested for what we value and believe in. Climate justice, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander justice, marriage equality and gender equity. I decided to archive this sign at home with our other protest signs, handmade with passion over the years.
#raisingtheirvoices #climatejusticenow #savethereef #alwayswasalwayswillbeaboriginalland #blacklivesmatter #metoo #loveislove
Leanne de Souza is a well-respected leader with 30+ years managing creative projects, people & processes in the national cultural sector.
Currently she’s enrolled in a Masters (Museum Studies) building upon a 2021 Bachelor of Arts (Media and Digital Cultures, Gender and Indigenous Studies) at the University of Queensland.
Leanne is regularly tapped as an independent contractor across the cultural industries. She is a strategist, program designer, facilitator, curator and producer.
Substack is the place for my infrequent writing from midlife and beyond. I write there about music, travel, books, conversation, alchemy, adoption, feminism, justice and genealogy. I’m in transition to a creative life > writer ; I live on unceded Turrbul country. https://leannedesouza.substack.com/
