AIM & WIN’s free public speaking training for women game-changing the face of industry conferences

10 July 2017 - Press release

Over 100 women trained in first 6 months of workshops
Call to industry – no more Manels!


The public speaking training workshops for women in music introduced by AIM and WIN in February 2017 have hit an early landmark, with 100 women attending the free training workshops to date.

The first four workshops hosted by WIN CEO Alison Wenham have seen 100 women learn vital presentation skills and confidence development tips, which they can use when giving presentations and participating in panels at industry events. Participants have included women from all sectors of the business from live, to labels, to publishing, to management, law and accountancy and everything in between. A further session has taken place in Canada, as part of Wenham’s role at WIN supporting the Worldwide independent music community.

Those trained include women from: CAA, Sound Cloud, Kobalt Music, ATC Management, Domino Recording Co, Warner Music, Live Nation, Warp Records, Beggars Group, 7Digital, AEI Media, Cooking Vinyl, Music Glue, Listen Up, Ninja Tune, PRS For Music, The Round House, One Little Indian, UK Music, IE Music, PIAS, Redlight Management, Communion Music, Merlin, Sound Advice, as well as artists and freelancers.

The next workshop in July is currently fully booked, with further sessions to be announced later in the year, in London, regionally and overseas. The events are heavily oversubscribed demonstrating the enormous need and demand.

The public speaking training was introduced by AIM and WIN to address the critical lack of gender diversity which often prevails at industry conferences. AIM’s Indie-Con conference in February was one of the UK music industry’s only events to achieve 50/50 gender equality with its speakers’ line-up.

Since introducing the training AIM has also worked alongside Midem in helping them to diversify their speaker line-up, and has been approached to recommend female speakers for numerous other industry events.

Alison Wenham, CEO of WIN, said: “The workshops are designed to be fun, collegiate and informal. Feedback has been fantastic and we will continue to provide free workshops until there are no more Manels.”

Lara Baker, Marketing & Events Director for AIM said: “The key to closing the music industry gender gap is to identify specific problems and come up with a means to tackle them. Our work training women in public speaking and supporting conferences to make their line-ups more diverse and inclusive is changing the face of the industry.”

Paul Pacifico, AIM CEO, said: “Music is a rich and diverse landscape.  I think the music industry does itself a disservice in not hearing from more diverse voices that could bring fresh thinking, ideas and insight from different perspectives.  AIM’s practical approach to helping close the gender gap at conferences is a great example of what we can do to bring about change.  I for one am much more interested in listening to panels rather than manels.”

AIM and WIN now call on all industry conferences to take the pledge ‘no more manels’ (all-male panels) and to prioritise greater diversity in their programming.

Those interested in attending a free public speaking training workshop should register for information by emailing lara@musicindie.com.