We believe in women in live music. - Lets stay tuned, connected and bold.
WHO ARE WE?
Women in Live Music [WILM] is a European platform and
online community for women working in live music; this
includes various ‘behind the scene’ roles: Sound Engineers,
Tour Managers, Lighting Designers, Riggers, Backliners,
Stage Managers, Stagehands and more.
WHY
To this day, women only make up a minor percentage of the
working force in the music industry. This primarily motivated
the creation of WILM. However no change can be effective
without support from everyone; so we welcome every gender
to join us in our effort to ensure a balanced diversity for the future.
HOW
This website, in addition to our pages on social media,
constitute a starting point in connecting our members.
We interact on social media on a daily basis, where everyone,
regardless of gender is invited to share experiences, pictures,
and tips with other members.
The community then goes beyond, into organising workshops
and meet-ups throughout Europe.
During these events, members can interact, learn and forge
long-lasting friendships with like-minded individuals.
Our events aspire to create a supportive and
inspiring community.
CREWLIST
This list is a tool for bands, booking agencies, and companies
looking for female crew members – whether they are looking for
backliners in France or merch sellers in Germany, our Crewlist
aims at facilitating accessibility to qualified women working in
the field.
In addition, the Crewlist can also be used for networking and
reaching out to members from other regions, for the simple sake
of meeting, or to ask for guidance while on tour in their
region.
We encourage all women working in the live music industry
to join our crewlist!
University of Hertfordshire Sep ‘08 – Jul ‘11 Achieved 2.1 in BSc Music Technology & Sound Design, including a 1st for Major Project Dissertation. Modules including: Music Business, Audio Electronics, Events Management, Production, Theory and Acoustics.
Master thesis subject: Foley Sample Library
Britannia Row Productions Training Jan – March ‘14. Full-time course with Britannia Row in London, studying Advanced Live Sound Technology.
Live Sound Engineer 2011 – Present. FOH/Monitor Engineer, Tour Manager & RF tech for touring artists and venues. Has experience mixing in all varieties of venues; from 150 capacitors clubs to arena shows, splitter tours to full production bus tours. Hannah has also worked with Live TV & Radio, assisting artists at The Brit Awards, Rugby World Cup, Sky Sports and Music Cube. She specialises in RF (radio technology).
Other qualifications and useful information:
Computer and social media literate.
Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
Established presence within the UK live music scene. Moderator for a key touring forum.
Experience in Live music and Music business in general:
Freelance sound engineer
FOH mixing
System design, optimisation and tuning
Confident use and understanding of networking, troubleshooting. Dante certified trainer as well as the Level 3 certificate.
Studio recording/mixing
Master’s degree in sound-engineering
Other qualifications and useful information:
Software development iOS (Swift), Android (Kotlin in progress), creator of WaveCalc sound calculator
In July of 2020, during the biggest crisis to ever affect our industry, she started the non-profit company C.R.E.W Coalition (Career Restricted Event Workers).
Winner WILM 2020 & 2021 System engineer of the year
Speak English, Russian, German
Contact information:
Mail: valerie.gards@gmail.com
https://valeriegard.com
Allen & Heath have from the beginning, provided us with consoles and assistance for training purposes, which we highly appreciate.
Rational Acoustics are helping us motivate more women to participate in technical training by offering two scholarships per year for our members in Europe. We are also fortunate that Rational Acoustics are giving members 15% discount on items from their online store. Please, email us at info@womeninlivemusic.eu if you would like a voucher for the discount. (This is for WILM members only).
Shure – Shure were some of the first to make workshops with us, and an important sponsor for our WILM Award!
Britannia Row Production Training – Malle (CEO) and Hannah (Co-director) met each other at BRPT in 2014 and are forever grateful for this beautiful place.
And nonetheless, WILM are super grateful for the support BRPT contributes with in order to find and help future female live sound engineers.
d&b Audio
Flight Cases International – Behind the popular WILMAward is the flightcase company Flightcases.dk that are successful in Denmark, Finland & Austria. Flightcases.dk has been creating and sponsoring the legendary trophies for the WILMA’s since 2020. On top of that all WILM members get 20% off all the company’s products by emailing us for a code. (Not a member yet, please use the ‘Sign Up’ button in the upper right corner)
Dirty Rigger – Gloves & Accessories has been our friends from the very start and has often sponsored great gear for different WILM events. With them WILM members can get 15% discount by emailing us for a code (Not a member yet, please use the ‘Sign Up’ button in the upper right corner)
SAFE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
What is the Safe Learning Environment program?
Over the years, WILM has realised the importance for women to have access to a community of like-minded women when working in an industry such as the live music industry, which is heavily male-dominated.
Equally important is for women to have strong female role models, so they feel comfortable and secure in their chosen field. We notice women with a strong support network tend to stay in the industry for longer, than those without.
WILM wish to assist our members with a more secure start in the music industry through our program, where women will have possibilities to gain experience and training from other more experienced women already working in the field.
Simultaneously these women will be introduced to a greater supportive community of colleagues from all over Europe through the activities of WILM.
The vision of this project is to break the existing pattern of women new to the industry feeling intimidated and alone, with the support of a safe learning framework. We particularly want to show young girls that traditionally male-dominated occupations such as Sound Engineering can be natural for them to work in.
The mentioned learning frameworks are achieved by having women employed to teach, and in general present the participants to different female role models in the live music industry.
Why is there a need for this kind of program?
Young girls often do not know who to reach out to if they want to become an active part of the live music industry.
Women make up a very small percentage of the technical working force in the live music industry.
Many women seem to lose confidence when they are trained by men – especially in the technical field.
Many women do not feel that they belong to a community in the industry.
This lack of belonging and support is a reason why many women are dropping out of the music industry after a relatively short time in comparison to their male counterparts.
NB. There is little research that supports the statement above. However, reviews of existing research on gender stereotypes in society indicates that a profession with a major imbalance in gender distribution affects women’s future career choices, including discontinuation.
Research also shows that girls at a young age have a higher tendency to develop self-criticism and are increasingly afraid to underperform, compared to boys.
It is undoubtedly very particular to one’s upbringing, as well as external and internal influences, but it can help explain why young girls do not trust that they will be able to handle certain subjects, and ultimately it can help explain why there are so few women working within technology and engineering today, where you find a clear preponderance of men.
How is the program executed?
By changing the mindset! First of all we wish to change the negative view women have of themselves in this industry. We notice a big number of women putting an exaggerated amount of pressure on themselves from the beginning, or who feel very intimidated from the very start.
Therefore, with a closed circle of women – sometimes even just one-to-one, we wish to introduce a learning environment where mistakes are allowed and where time is granted to start over again. Also where there will be a lot of opportunities for hands-on and practical experiences for each individual.
We have divided our program into four different sections:
Festival: We offer a multi-day workshop for a selected group of women, where they are partly included as volunteers, and also part of a WILM-camp where the participants will be introduced to a different theme every day, such as sound, lights, production, etc.
Venue: We offer one-to-one training on selected gigs in either production or tech, followed up by the proposal for a mentorship.
Workshop: We continually offer “Intro to” workshops with the introduction to different fields in production or tech. These workshops are all over Europe, for women by women.
Camp: In association with Bang&Olufsen we are in the process of creating an annual 4-day camp for up to 20 girls aged 15-20, introducing them to Live Sound.
For each section an introduction to different options of education and the greater network will be included.
Read more about the individual sections further down.
The success criteria for the program
We want to be a gate for women who wish to enter the live music industry.
We also want to change the mindset for young girls and make it natural for them to work in “a man’s world”.
We hope that within the next 5-7 years the number of women working behind the stage will have increased from less than 10% to hopefully 35% – not only by introducing women to the industry, but also by holding onto those already working in the industry.
The Needs for the execution of the program
Unfortunately the Safe Learning Environment program is not without costs. We require funding to cover the instructor fees, the project managers and their assistants. We also need funding for learning materials and sometimes we need support for travel arrangements and accommodation for the events across Europe. We depend on accessing venues and gear for free, and are very grateful to those who are help us out with this.
Our principals dictate our workshops should be free of charge, as we believe knowledge is power and should be given for free to everybody, not just those who are lucky enough to afford it. If you have an idea for a donation or a sponsorship, we are open for any suggestions.
Timiann has experience in coaching international crews and individuals.
Support within 24 hours in case of urgent conflicts within a crew, unpleasant experiences on a gig, or even personal issues.
Please see contact info below
Timiann is available on Skype, Zoom, Messenger, Whatsapp, Viber, Facetime or whatever works best for you
