ONLINE FESTIVAL PXSSY PANDEMIQUE RAISES OVER £5,000 FOR WOMEN’S AID
With live events and festivals across the world being cancelled due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the music industry has been looking for ways to adapt to life under lockdown. Brought together by artists, musicians, poets and performers, Pxssy Pandemique is an online music festival broadcast entirely via Instagram Live and has raised an incredible £5,580 for the charity Women’s Aid.
280 Likes, 10 Comments - @p_pandemique Relief Acc (@pxssy.pandem) on Instagram: "WOMEN ARE NOT SECONDARY @womens_aid @pxssy.pandem @selfesteemselfesteem @kelliblanchett"
Held on the weekend of Friday 27th to Sunday 29th March, the festival featured a line-up of all female-identifying artists, including electronic pop singer-songwriter Låpsley; the acclaimed Northern Irish songwriter SOAK; and indie-rock icon KT Tunstall.
The festival was arranged by Rebecca Taylor (aka the experimental pop-star Self Esteem and former member of Slow Club), and musician Kelli Blanchett. Aware of how the lockdown and loss of performance opportunities would impact on musicians, they decided to put together a DIY digital festival where artists could live stream their set from their own homes to an online audience.
“I think we had the idea on Sunday the 22nd and by Friday the 27th the festival was off to a start,” says Kelli.
In light of the overwhelmingly male 2020 lineups for festivals like Reading and Leeds, for which only 22% of the musical acts feature a woman or non-binary member, Rebecca and Kelli decided that making the festival a showcase of exclusively female-identifying talent was the way to go. They were also conscious of using the festival as a way of supporting womxn more broadly outside of the music industry too.
"It felt important to us to try and help in this time of crisis” she says, “We’re not front line workers or caregivers or anything like that, but we did talk about how this lockdown was affecting women, especially vulnerable ones - so we decided that we should try and raise money for Women’s Aid.”
Concerns have been raised about how the lockdown and self-isolation measures might impact those who are victims of domestic abuse and for whom home isn’t a safe place to stay. According to Chinese activists, cases of domestic violence have surged following the Coronavirus outbreak and an anti-domestic violence non-profit based charity in Hubei – the epicentre of China’s outbreak, claims that reports of domestic violence have nearly doubled since the province’s cities were put under lockdown.
At a time when support for society’s most vulnerable has never been more crucial, it’s fantastic to see artists and musicians joining together to overcome the obstacles of our nationwide quarantine for a good cause.
“This is something we are definitely going to do again, we were so insanely happy with the outcome” says Kelli, “It’s been a learning experience for me and Rebecca and now we know how to iron out any teething problems we had for next time.”
It looks like we’re all still going to be stuck at home for the next few months, but at least we can look forward to Pxssy Pandemique part II.