Collectives and Activists: Women leading Change in Music

Vick has worked in music and the creative industries for twenty-five years; for six years she was Chief Executive Officer of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers & Authors and is a Henley Business School MBA graduate.  Vick is now the President of the Independent Society of Musicians, representing over 11,000 musicians in the UK and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.  She was enrolled into the Music Week Women in Music Awards Roll of Honour and Radio 4 Woman’s Hour Music Industry Powerlist.

Vick specialises as a consultant and campaigner for diversity and inclusion in the creative industries, training and advising organisations with her clients ranging from record label trade bodies IMPALA and AIM to electronic music festivals to tv & film orchestras.  This is grounded in her work as a PhD researcher at Queen Mary University in the Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity researching women’s careers in music. 

Vick is a regular press commentator on gender diversity in the music industry with regular articles as well as influential report Counting the Music Industry, a gender audit of UK record labels and publishing companies. She is the founder of The F-List for Music directory of female musicians which is a not-for-profit organisation campaigning on behalf of and supporting female musicians in the UK.  Vick is also a trustee of charity Parents & Carers in Performing Arts and on the advisory boards of numerous music industry panels. 

Charisse is chief executive at Black Lives in Music. Black Lives in Music is an organisation that is achieving equality for Black musicians and professionals in the music industry through research and advocacy and are at the vanguard of the effort to combat racism, uniting organisations and musicians to create a truly inclusive and diverse music industry.

Last year, Black Lives in Music commissioned a survey on the personal experience of Black music creators and industry professionals.  The survey engaged with nearly 2,000 respondents.  The ground breaking report ‘Being Black in the UK music industry’ now published achieved over 3000 downloads in just one week and subsequent media campaign reached 788.9 million. It produced key information and an insight into the experience of the Black music creators and professionals in today’s music industry.

Dr. Maiko Kawabata (Lecturer in Music at the Royal College of Music and Staff Tutor in Music at the Open University) is an award-winning musicologist and professional violinist. She is the author of Paganini, the 'Demonic' Virtuoso and a co-editor of Exploring Virtuosities: Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, Nineteenth-Century Musical Practices and Beyond.  Her research interests include performance history, performance studies, gender studies, music and race; she received a BBC Radio 3/AHRC grant to further her research into Japanese composer Kikuko Kanai. She has wide experience as a violinist in orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the UK, USA, and Germany.

Gabriella is an award-winning soprano, recording artist, public speaker curator, and activist, who has become one of the leading voices on the fight for gender equality in music. 

Listed as one of the BBC’s 100 most inspirational and influential women in the world, Gabriella is also the founder and curator of the Donne, Women in Music, a charitable foundation dedicated to achieving gender equality in the music industry.  

Gabriella enjoys an international career that spans the genres of opera, oratorio and chamber music. Recognised by Sir Charles Mackerrras as “a singer of outstanding talent”, she performs regularly as a soloist in international stages covering a wide-ranging repertoire from baroque to contemporary.

Gabriella is also the winner of Air Europa ‘Classical Act of the Year’, Peter Pears Prize, Richard III Prize, Acquisition International - Most Inspirational Female Musician 2021 and was also included on the latest edition of The Female Book: 67 women changing the world today. 

Shzr Ee is a Reader and ethnomusicologist (with a specialism in Sinophone and Southeast Asian worlds) at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is committed to decolonial and EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) work in music and the performing arts, with interests in how race discourses intersect problematically with class, gender and recent debates on posthuman digitalities, climate change and multispecies thinking.

Shzr Ee is also EDI Director for the School of Performing and Digital Arts at Royal Holloway, where she has initiated campaigns including an ongoing Safe Space Discussion Series, and workshops on topics ranging from inter-ethnic solidarity to mental health and toxic masculinity. She is committed to mainstreaming EDI considerations within broader and systemic School workflows. As a steering committee member of the national sector group EDIMS, she also serves in co-mentoring projects.

Laura is Associate Professor of Music at Maynooth University, Ireland. Her main interests concern women in music and popular music cultures. She is the author of the monograph Paul Dukas: Composer and Critic (Boydell, 2019). She has co-edited two further books: Paul Dukas: Legacies of a French Musician (Routledge, 2019) and Women and Music in Ireland (Boydell, 2022). She has also written several pieces on pop/rock memoirs in contemporary culture. Her current research is focused on feminist musical activism, a subject which is investigated in the article ‘Feminist Musical Activism in Ireland (2016 - 21) and Feminist Musicology’ (Ethnomusicology Ireland, 2022). Her work on women, gender, and music extends beyond academia to Sounding the Feminists (STF); she is a co-founder of the STF Working Group established in 2017. Sounding the Feminists is a volunteer group which campaigns for gender equality in the music sector across the island of Ireland and has established partnerships with organisations such as the National Concert Hall and Contemporary Music Centre.