Starting in 2019, UK music festival We Out Here — which is set to host its fifth edition from August 15-18 in the Dorset countryside — seeks to highlight the under-the-radar artists whose music it does not deviate from the dominant tastes. Now, the festival is opening more doors — this time to the next generation of supporters.
The Future Foundations initiative, recently launched by We Out Here, seeks to educate and empower music grassroots advocates, offering 15 applicants the opportunity to improve their skills with a tailored training programme. In addition to on-the-job training at this year's We Out Here, the initiative includes mentoring, networking opportunities and virtual workshops. It will also remove other potential barriers for hopefuls by covering travel, accommodation and meal costs.
“As a senior, it's definitely our responsibility to support the grassroots scenes for the sake of culture,” he says. Gilles Petersoncurator, radio presenter and A&R who co-founded We Out Here with live music promoter Noah Ball. “We've all benefited from that expertise over the years, so we need to allow those experiences and opportunities to happen.”
Grassroots supporters are often the first line of discovery for emerging musicians, but that comes with a certain risk, he says Ellie Whitechief marketing officer at We Out Here. “These promoters are taking a big financial risk doing what they're doing,” he says. “They often do it as passion projects. they reach amazing platform artists who move up the chain, but organizers often don't see anything behind it.”
The Future Foundations project was funded by Arts Council England on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, which distributes £5 million to festivals, promoters and music venues as part of the Grassroots Music Fund. A spokesman for Arts Council England says Future Foundations “offer a vital platform for grassroots communities to connect with new generations, share their knowledge and strengthen the future of the industry”.
White says Bulletin board that by the time the application period closed, they had received over 200 applicants for the posts, with an emphasis on attracting supporters from under-represented scenes and those outside of London (the pool was eventually whittled down to 15). In UK Music's Diversity Report 2024, the number of Black, Asian and ethnically diverse respondents aged 16-24 had increased from 23.2% in 2022 to 40.6% in 2024. UK Music reports that industry initiatives which seek to diversify the workforce — like Future Foundations — they “work”.
Gilles Peterson
Benjamin Theo
“We wanted to influence the diversity of supporters,” says White. “Right now it's a very male, very white segment of a homogenous industry as a whole. It can be very difficult for people to get into it without connections or a little financial backing.”
This emphasis is a natural outgrowth of Peterson's long-standing mission to give fresh and/or underrepresented voices a chance. During his career at BBC Radio, Worldwide FM and Jazz FM, Peterson has provided early works on music by Amy Winehouse, Khruangbin, The Roots, Madlib and others. for the past decade, he has hosted a weekly show on BBC Radio 6 Music. With We Out Here, he and Ball made a point of supporting artists who might not be fortunate enough, making it the kind of event where André 3000 of OutKast fame might perform his flute debut. New Blue Sun in full and has the 18,000 capacity crowd to embrace it, while left-field artists such as Sampha, Floating Points, Yaya Bey and jazz legend Brian Jackson also take the spotlight.
We Out Here is not immune to the challenges facing much of the UK and European festival market. According to figures from the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), 56 music festivals have either been cancelled, postponed or closed this year, up from 36 in 2023. “We're fighting big, big promoters and machines that control the acts, the fees and all that,” says Peterson. “Over the last few years there has been a lack of support for this kind of grassroots work and we are on our way to remain independent and be an important part of the journey for people in the industry.”
So far at least, We Out Here have managed to weather the turmoil going on in the UK live scene. But with Future Foundations, he hopes to provide a gateway for the next generation to build something better.
