In the second year of the Australian Women In Music Awards (AWMA), founding Executive Director Vicki Gordon is expanding the festival's charter to create a broader, more inclusive conversation around gender and culture in the Australian music industry.
The AWMAs were held for the first time last year as the result of Vicki's 25-year endeavour to recognise the monumental efforts and contributions of women in all aspects of the music industry, from front-of-house all the way backstage and behind-the-scenes.
“The venue was absolutely packed and what we were experiencing was really a lot of emotion in the room,” Vicki says of the 2018 inaugural AWMA ceremony.
“Anybody that was there will tell you that; it was overwhelming because there were women being recognised onstage who have been working, for example, in tech areas for 25 years and never been acknowledged, and they were receiving their first award ever in their career.”
Building on the qualified success of the inaugural AWMAs, this year award categories have been added that further recognise the incredible work being done by women throughout various industry sectors, including classical music and music journalism.
“What's fabulous and really exciting for me in the context of the AWMAs is that because we have opened it up to so many different areas, what we're going to be able to do now is track where women do exist in those areas where they have historically been invisible, and that's important in terms of repositioning the history of the Australian music industry,” Vicki says.
“What's interesting about the classical area too is that there was an article in The Guardian recently that spoke about some research that looked at 1,145 classical concerts around the globe and only 76 included a work [composed] by a woman. The research from there amounted to 95 per cent of concerts worldwide having music composed by men.”
More than a presentation of awards, the two-day AWMA programme also includes a series of in-depth forums exploring pertinent matters and issues currently dominating the music space.
“We're really having to have serious discussions about the negative effects of the media and the double standards that exist in the industry in relation to gender, race, sexuality, cultural background etc.,” Vicki says.
“These things are important conversations and I feel very passionately about AWMA providing a platform to have these conversations, and I know by the response we're getting that this is something that the industry is very excited to engage in.”
Despite current debate about the relevance of gendered awards, Vicki says the support and involvement of men, particularly in nominating someone for an AWMA, is a crucial part of the Awards' success as well as the struggle for equality.
“The support of men is always going to be important when we're talking about change, particularly in the gender space,” she explains.
“But I can also say that we're a global community; we're made up of many different things. We're men, we're women, we're queer, we're culturally-diverse – we're a whole lot of things and as a community what's most important is that we come together.
“In the context of the AWMAs and to put it in the simplest way, that's what I'm committed to: creating a broader music community that is about bringing everyone to the stage and, as much as we can, giving everyone a platform.”
