Festivals are at their best when they are places where everyone feels welcome, safe and unafraid to be themselves. In this two-day seminar during SoAlive, the European festival association YOUROPE unites experts on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), behavior, and mental health from across the continent. The goal is to teach festival makers and other cultural actors how to make their events and their organizations more diverse, inclusive and equal to create happier, healthier teams and visitors.
If you would like to participate in the whole two-day seminar, please register via https://yourope.org/know-how/2nd-seminar-on-dei/. Registered participants will be invited to join a walking tour of Sofia and a participants’ dinner on Wednesday evening. If you can’t join the whole two days, it is also possible for SoAlive delegates to attend individual sessions.
DAY 1 FULL PROGRAM & SCHEDULE
10:45 Presentation: Beyond the Periphery - Balkan Underrepresentation in Europe’s Music Ecosystem
This short talk shares new findings from SoAlive’s ongoing study on geographical underrepresentation with a focus on the Balkans/South East Europe. We map the structural gaps that keep artists and professionals at the ‘periphery’ – opaque selection pipelines, mobility constraints, curation/language bias, and network/data invisibility – and show how these translate into fewer bookings and weaker circulation. The emphasis is on practical fixes that DEI teams and programmers can adopt this season: paired curation, transparent criteria and juries, micro-mobility support, and inclusion of South Eastern European venues/data in European networks. The goal is simple: turn “bridge-building” into measurable commitments that move artists across borders, not just ideas across panels.
Speaker:
Ruth Koleva - Head of Program at SoAlive Music Conference / Sofia Live Festival
11:25 Panel: Is it DEI versus safety? The limits of participation
Is universal accessibility an illusion? When you are trying to make your festival more accessible and inclusive, you’ll find that measures sometimes clash with the safety of festival participants. In these cases, it’s often the safety team’s unpopular job to say: “no, we can’t do it”. In this panel, crowd safety experts from YOUROPE’s Event Safety (YES) Group discuss where at festivals the needs of the individual come into conflict with the needs of the many. Should people in wheelchairs be let into the thick of the crowd? Should service and emotional support animals be allowed on festival sites? And can improvements for the few bring benefits for the many? Let’s look at DEI through the eyes of safety teams!
Speakers:
Isabel Roudsarabi - host; co-founder and managing director at Höme – For Festivals
Morten Therkildsen - Director of Safety at Roskilde Festival Group / YES Group
Alexandra von Samson - Master craftswoman for event technology / YES Group
Roxana Luca - ARTmania / Emagic / Pozitif Live / YES Group
12:30 Case Study: DEI at Roskilde Festival
Trying to have an impact beyond their festival is one of Roskilde Festival’s core values. They want their visitors to have something that they can take home and that changes the way they interact with the world. This is why they have chosen Utopia indefinitely as a motto for their entire operation. In this session, we will present some of the many projects that Roskilde Festival offers to make their participants feel welcome, safe and included.
Speaker:
Mika Christoffersen - Head of DEI & Behavior at Roskilde Festival
14:00 Workshop: Cultural/diversity awareness training
In this interactive training session, Jannick will cover the topics of psychological safety and socially responsible communication. As a participant, you will leave with practical tools for leading team cultures that enable all critical voices to speak up and be heard, as well as insights into how to constructively engage with external stakeholders on social justice and sustainability causes.
Trainer:
Jannick Friis Christensen - Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Researcher & Professional