Helen Marcou is the one of the busiest activists in the music industry and will be sharing her experiences as part of an 'in conversation' presentation at WAMCon.
In addition to being co-owner and manager of Melbourne's Bakehouse Studios, she is also one of the most effective activists within the music industry and has powered many of the regulatory changes to make live music venues safer for everyone.
“I've been working in music for well over 25 years now,” Helen says.
“My partner (Quincey McLean) founded Bakehouse Studios all that time ago and it's a little creative roof/ cubby house for Melbourne musicians.
"For many years we've operated out of the music studios, but we also work with lots of visual artists and all sorts of different sectors of the arts.
“About seven years ago, that's what really brings me over to WAMCon, I got very heavily involved in advocacy when there was some liquor licensing rules happening [in Melbourne]. It was a policy that equated live music with violence.”
In response, Helen and Quincey founded Save Live Australia's Music (SLAM) and in 2010 orchestrated the biggest, cultural protest in Australia's history when 20,000 people marched on the Victorian Parliament House in support of the movement.
Since then, and using the success with SLAM as encouragement, Helen has expanded her advocacy role and has been instrumental in forging safe spaces for women and marginalised groups within the industry.
“From the privilege of being in those groups and having the ear of government, in 2015 I called for the formation of a sexual assault and harassment task force down here to create safer spaces in our licensed venues. That's recently been funded and we're about to run a pilot programme.
“That work has taken me into a very different space and doing advocacy around women, marginalised people and non-binary people, talking about gender representation as well as the regulatory reform that I've been working on for the past seven years.”
At WAMCon, Helen will be part of a live conversation discussing the extent of her work, why it's important and what needs to be done in order to achieve lasting changes to what she sees as an insidious culture of inequity.
“We'll be talking a lot about how the community can get involved and how it takes people power to change things, but ultimately regarding the work I've done with regulatory reform and how we can make changes.
“We're also talking about the gender work and the important work that needs to happen around representation, safety and equity within the music industry because that's something a number of us have come together to champion initiatives that are happening to balance these gender roles.”
Helen's commitment to industry reform and advocacy recently earned her an induction to the Victorian Honour Roll For Women.
It's a fairly exclusive accolade, with only 20 recipients selected each year and just 602 women (including Helen) being named since the award began in 2001. “For me it's humbling to be put on that roll,” Helen says.
“Even the women this year I was inducted alongside were incredible leaders in their field, so it's encouraging that sort of acknowledged and it's quite motivating because sometimes in activism it can be tiresome and we do get activism fatigue, so anything like that helps us move along.”
