How the WIP Project is changing the dance music game
It’s no secret that the Australian music scene has a gender problem – there are statistics to prove it. Your eye rolls at the sight of yet another male-dominated lineup and blatant displays of tokenism are completely justified, with reports showing a clear lack of access to paid opportunities for women and gender-diverse artists.
For DJ Sarah Morgan, breaking into the dance music industry was an intimidating feat. She felt that at the time, there weren't a lot of women in the scene that she could lean on for support. But as she started to settle in and her confidence grew, Sarah became increasingly vocal about the dire need for more diverse representation in the boys club that is the dance music scene.
“I started to consider that maybe if there had been more diverse representation, it would have been easier for me,” she said.
“And then [I] sort of took one step further and thought about not just representing myself as a white woman, but started looking at the representation of people of colour or people with disabilities and just realizing that classic thing of ‘you can't be what you can't see’.”
Enter: the WIP Project.
What started as a humble google spreadsheet with the names and contact details of female and non-binary talent, has turned to an empowering platform where women and gender diverse artists are given a space to connect, explore and thrive.
The infant stages of the WIP Project were prompted by Sarah’s frustration with a general lack of effort to book diverse talent in the dance music scene.
“People would put these Facebook statuses up being like, ‘does anyone know any female DJs?’ … once every fortnight… I just found that really annoying because I thought, you're a Booker, it's your job to look,” she said.
“But on the other hand, I felt encouraged by that, because I thought well, people are trying to make a positive change.”
“I made a choice… instead of arguing I'm going to help.”
Passionately driven to empower other women to unabashedly take up space in the industry, in 2018, Sarah started collecting a running list of diverse talent she could recommend whenever laissez-faire attempts at hiring female DJs would arise.
The spreadsheet increasingly gained traction, with bookers starting to frequently refer to it when curating their line-ups.
In 2020, Sarah teamed up with DJ Florence Brown to combine their shared passion for challenging the male-dominated status quo and together, take WIP to the next level. Fusing Sarah’s vision and widely circulated database of talent with Florence’s industry experience and web development skills, the WIP we know and love today was born.
Sarah Morgan (left) and Florence Brown (right), the collaborators behind the WIP Project. Image: supplied.
“I knew from having that spreadsheet that it would work,” Sarah said.
“[We were] creating something that's for everyone, it’s not us versus them. It’s us being like, ‘if you want to make your line-up more diverse, that's great, here you go. We’re gonna help you.”
WIP now functions as a practical resource, featuring profiles on a diverse range of artists and hosting a Facebook community that’s blossomed in a way even the founders didn’t expect.
“It's become a really cool place where we're not just connecting our members with the wider industry, but we're also connecting them with each other,’ she said.
The feature profiles are in place to expand the WIP network and uplift those in the music industry that the founders “feel might need to be elevated even further and have a spotlight shone on them.”
“We try to use our feature profiles to show really diverse people not just in terms of race and location, but also in terms of what they do,” Sarah said.
“So if we want to try and encourage more lighting people, we might profile a lighting person. We kind of use those to further boost people in our community or just people that are on our radar.”
“I think it's really nice to kind of give people a moment in the sun.”
Thinking about giving DJing a crack?
Having built up an impressive resume, Sarah has some words of advice for aspiring artists looking to try their hand at house, disco, techno or any genre in between.
“Find someone who's doing what you want to do, if they exist, and then reach out to them and… get advice directly from them because that's what I did at the start of my DJ career and I still do now,” she said.
“It's so helpful because you start to find mentors, and people are always more than happy to help, more often than you think. If you reach out to someone and ask a question, chances are they've been there too.”
Sarah also recommends enrolling in some community courses to get yourself started. If you’re based in Melbourne, check out the FReeZA program, Yarra Youth Services, or, make like Sarah and pick up a DJ unit at university if it’s available!
Keep an eye-out for WIP’s next big moves. They’re set to expand beyond dance music and will soon start featuring bands and artists from a wider range of genres, opening WIP up to the whole music industry.
