The team behind Scotland's TRNSMT Festival has responded to criticism of the event's 2019 line up.
The bill was unveiled a few hours ago, and contains an all-male batch of headliners: George Ezra, Stormzy, and Catfish & The Bottlemen.
Last year TRSNMT featured a line up with 21% female talent; this year that figure has actually shrunk, to 20%.
Gender diversity on festival line ups has come under increasingly scrutiny of late, and onlookers were quick to point out these figures:
TRNSMT Festival 2019
2018: 21%
2019: 20%@TRNSMTfest #bookmorewomen pic.twitter.com/659Ux9nyAi— Book More Women (@BookMoreWomen) February 18, 2019
DF Concerts boss, geoff ellis, says he wants the music industry n fans to recognise the lack of women being represented at festivals/gigs etc. then DF announced trnsmt only which features 10 female artist this year. ?¿?¿ pic.twitter.com/Qhsc1NSZqh
— connah ⎊ (@thatguyconnah) February 18, 2019
As a result of this, founder Geoff Ellis spoke to NME about the booking policy, and the thinking behind it.
"We try to have more females on the bill. Jess Glynne is a big artist and she’s there. Would I prefer to have more female artists on the bill? Yes. But it’s also about developing female artists to make them into headliners. We had Sigrid on the King Tut’s last year, but we’ve now upgraded her to the main stage".
TRNSMT is run by DF Concerts, who also curate separate event Edinburgh Summer Sessions on Scotland's East Coast. Ellis continued:
"You’ve got people like Florence & The Machine who we would’ve been delighted to have as a TRNSMT headliner, but she’s coming in August so we’ve got her headlining two nights at Edinburgh Summer Sessions instead".
"We’ve got CHVRCHES headlining the Summer Sessions too, so it’s not that we’re ignoring female artists, but you can’t always get them on the weekend of your festival and sometimes you’ve got to get them at different points of the year".
TRSNMT runs between July 12th – 14th.
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