image: Paul Mason
One of the biggest stories in the music press in the early part of 2015 looked at the staggering lack of female performers at festivals in the UK. Some of the major British music festivals hosted a lineup where just 6% of the final lineup had a female presence. Versions of the festival posters circulated online, edited to show only bands featuring women – they looked like examples of minimalist graphic design.
In February, Melvin Benn of Festival Republic (the company who organise Reading and Leeds), was quoted as saying “There has been a historic lack of opportunity for women to get into bands” in response to a question on why he did not book more female acts for the festival.
If there’s one thing Fan Club proves, it’s that there is no lack of opportunity for women to get into bands. It is so easy to fill an entire night with music by female artists. We spent the months leading up to our launch party discussing and planning what we wanted Fan Club to be. It’s easy enough to play a set of songs by female artists, but we wanted Fan Club to be much more than that.
In March of this year, we launched the first Fan Club event. As we found our feet, we started to invite women from beyond Nottingham to speak, play, and DJ at our events. In April, six-piece pop girl gang, Slum of Legs, played a show in conjunction with Hollaback!, an international movement focused on tackling street harassment. In June, we invited Sarah Sahim (Not All Women podcast/freelance writer) to speak about the issues she has faced being a woman of colour with a vocal presence on the internet. She spent a significant part of her talk musing on how she dealt with online abuse from men as a backlash to her piece, The Unbearable Whiteness of Indie, which she wrote for Pitchfork in March 2015.
July’s event featured a set from Nottingham’s alt-grunge grrrls, Babe Punch, followed by a Q&A with One Beat Zines, a self-publishing feminist duo, who actively give women a platform to be creative. In October, we ran a mini alternative fresher’s fayre, a special event to showcase activities and opportunities for women in Nottingham. We try and focus on having fun at our events – we sell female-positive temporary tattoos and stickers, do free glitter face painting, and put together goody bags with gifts based on the theme of the event. We’ve had Smash the Patriarchy piñata competitions, and commissioned a life-size illustration of Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope, to pin up at our events – she’s (unofficially) Fan Club’s President. We also put together and print a zine for each event – a collection of writing, illustration and design from women all over the country.
Nine months on, we’ve worked relentlessly to make Fan Club the night that we envisioned at the start – a platform to celebrate women, and to foster creativity and collaboration. We invite women of all ages to talk, create, listen, make, and do. Being a part of Nottingham’s incredible community of positive, active women is really important to us. We’ve been working with female promoters and women’s groups in the city, such as the Hellfire Harlots, Call Tyrone, Default This, and Reel Equality to name just a few. We strive to keep the night 100% accessible to all genders and ages; we very much want everyone to get involved, to try something that they have never done before.
“I love it when people come up to the DJ booth to ask what track I’m playing, and we’ve recently started to publish set-lists after events, due to popular demand. I love chatting to people about the music we play, it’s something that’s really important to the success of the night. People are always requesting bands and singers, something that none of us have ever heard of. That’s the best part. It really proves that there is so much talent out there; I regularly finish a set only to kick myself because I forgot to play So. Many. SONGS.” - Kaylea Mitchem (Fan Club’s Founder)
Fan Club happens on the first Saturday of every month, at Rough Trade, and occasionally at other places too.
If you want to get involved with Fan Club, send ‘em an email to [email protected]. If you’d like to get involved with writing or illustrating for the Fan Club ‘zine, email [email protected]
Fan Club website
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