‘Getting in’ or ‘moving on’? On internship experiences and representation in the popular music festival sector

Abstract

ABSTRACT The cultural workforce has previously been described as pre-dominantly white, male and middle-class. Internships are often seen as a solution as they would function as a ‘democratising path to launch careers’. Nevertheless, previous research has also suggested that there is no smooth path from an internship to paid work for anyone, and even less so for some than for others. Moving beyond previous research, which often neglects the production perspective on music festival organisation altogether or exclusively focuses on individuals ‘getting into’ the cultural and creative industries (CCI), we also include those who are ‘moving on’. We question the (non)diverse composition of the popular music festival sector in Rotterdam, focusing on why and how people are excluded from working in it. Semi-structured interviews were collected in two phases: 1) workers who did an internship and moved into the sector (n = 11) and 2) former interns who left the music festival sector after their internship (n = 13). Findings indicate the force of the somatic norm of maleness and how related experiential differences affect sectoral demographic inequality. Moreover, internships are not an ‘easy fix’ for a non-diverse workforce because of how work is, experienced, organised and rewarded.