Diversify the Stage with Noelle Scaggs of Fitz and The Tantrums
A few weeks ago I had this amazing opportunity to cover Fitz and The Tantrums when they performed at the Drive In Concert series at Westland Mall presented by Prime Social Group. I also wrote this really cool article. Unfortunately due to some unforeseen circumstances in my life that article will never be posted. It didn’t just cover or review the show, it touched on issues like doing live shows in the age of Covid-19, how important it is to have music right now, and co vocalist Noelle Scaggs new initiative. I won’t lie I was devastated when I found out. Not only was it unfair to myself, it was also unfair to Noelle and everyone else involved. She had given me the incredible opportunity to not only speak with her about the show, but also about her initiative she started earlier this year called Diversify the Stage and now it was going to be wasted.
What she is doing is with Diversify the Stage is so important. She’s trying to give a pipe line to minorities whom you don’t normally see in Rock and Roll or the touring industry. She’s partnering with Jerome Crooks on his Never Famous employment portal to get qualified applicants to the right people. She’s also working with others in the industry to get involved in youth programs including apprenticeships to help young people find careers in and around the music industry. Her initiative could change the lives of so many.
It’s a topic that’s very near and dear to my heart but hits home even harder now with my current circumstance. So much so I couldn’t in good conscious let the opportunity to help get the word out just die along with the original article so I decided to post her quotes and the pictures from the show on my own.
Here’s what she told me about why she started Diversify the Stage:
“I started Diversify the Stage because I’ve been in this industry for almost 20 years and as I’ve kind of grown within the more alterative pop space I’ve recognized the lack of diversity as it relates to behind the stage, our stage crews, our production, some times our venues, things like that just depending on where we are, who’ve we opened for, even within our own team where we may be diverse in gender we’re not necessarily culturally diverse. I kind of started to ponder on why that was, is it the case of it being more a rock and roll thing, is that just something that’s a standard look, and obviously we hire on people that we know and people that we’re comfortable with so if you don’t know a person’s name or your not familiar with a person of color or someone within the LGBTQ community you’re more than likely not going to hire them because of the fact that a lot of our business is based upon word of mouth and word of mouth rereferrals. So the first idea for me was how do we widen the scope of our referral practices and hiring. The singular idea was creating a more centralized resource for hiring, for employment. It came down to me kind of just having different conversations with different tour managers and production managers and things like that to kind of get an idea of how the hiring works, is there a resource out there that’s like this in the world or is this something that needs to be made from scratch and if so I need to find the partners to be able to do that. I ended up being introduced to a man by the name of Jerome Crooks who had already been working on an employment portal that was specific to hiring touring staff . I connected with him and we had a lot of like minded vison about our industry and how we wanted to really change things so we decided to partner up and that employment portal is called Never Famous and it’s specific for connecting qualified touring staff to recruiters that are looking to build their teams.”
The second part of the initiative is designed to partner up young people with mentors and help them find them resources they need to get involved in the music business.
“We’re going to be introducing a lot of other resources including direct connects to vendors, production suppliers and things like that as well as creating pipelines for people that want to be come mentors for young people who are interested in creating internship platforms within their companies so that we can create more access to jobs and education through those resources. The second part of this whole thing was is if the pool is shallow with qualified candidates now, say if there just aren’t enough African Americans or people of colors to become stage crews for x y z, we’ll lets start fixing this issue by giving access to young people and introducing them to careers. So I created this four point strategy of creating a pipeline for this purpose and it’s through education, which is introduction to careers in the vast eco system that we have in this business and then tying that into mentorship with industry professional’s that are well seasoned, that have been in the game for a long time that can kind of show a young person the ins and outs of how our infrastructure functions. When we’re on the road through concerts, production and all of it, the agencies, how the management companies work with the different details and things, as well then bringing that into internship placement and what I’m really looking for is equitable opportunities. So all of the internships I’m really looking towards are paid internship programs and if they can not be paid with in a certain company then identifying sponsor partners who can either provide scholarships or sponsor a person to be able to get through the internship program with the particular company and from there it’s job placement so either partnering up with artists and their tour staffers like your tour management and basically create apprenticeships throughout their team. If there is somebody that is super into fashion and they want to get into wardrobe or they want to figure out a career in merchandising you would bring that young person out to apprentice with the person that is leading that particular department on a tour. And we are able to partner up with artist and with the labels in order to make sure that that person can be paid for because we have to think about how that person’s going to eat, if there’s enough bunk space and what the cost look like to bring a young person out. So if we can start creating earmark plans in order to bring people out and give them this access then I think down the line we’re really going to be able to see more diverse crews in our industry by providing access we wouldn’t normally have”
She ends by adding “it’s just really creating access to careers with in our field with the emphasis on by looking at our BIPOC communities, looking at our LGBTQ communities, our non gender conforming communities and women and really giving them a more extensive path ways to careers in our business. And hopefully, with all this work, we’ll be able to diversify our stages for years to come. ”
I personally would like to say thank you to Noelle and her like minded individuals involved for trying to make the music world a more diverse inclusive place. The world needs it now more than ever.
I’d also like to thank her for taking time out of her busy schedule to have this conversation with me.
For more information on Diversify the stage or if you are interested in learning how to help or be part of everything,
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