Pandora festival aims to celebrate women in music

A women-focused festival in Scotland aims to “redress the balance” in the music industry.

Pandora Fest will be held at Carron Valley’s DunCarron Medieval Fort on Saturday, July 16.

Organisers say the first female-positive music event of its kind in Scotland aims to celebrate women in music by giving them a bigger platform – with two stages running from 10:30am until 11pm on the day.

Doom rock outfit Courtesans will headline the festival, with female-fronted rock bands Heel and Bugeye, metal band Firesign, voodoo metal band Vodun, punk acts Bravado and Arcade 39 performing at the event.

Other genre-spanning acts include Sofia B, Wolf Ruby, Twist Helix, Emaline Delapaix, Bravado, ContainHer and Erin Bennett.

Festival organiser and singer Caroline Daalmeijer tells TeamRock: “We wanted to launch this because we know from experience the obstacles women face in the music industry.

“We always see festivals which are predominantly full of male bands – and unfortunately, even the women on these festival committees favour male artists.”

She continues: “We are not anti-male – there will be mixed bands on the day and men in the crowd – we just want to do a female-positive music event which celebrates women.

“We hope in future that festivals will re-evaluate their lineup policies, think outside the box and step away from cookie-cutter acts. People should also speak up about who they hope to see at at a festival.

“Festivals are an exciting and fun experience – the main thrust of the day is about listening to good music that is really well played for its own sake – not judged for whether it’s a man or a woman behind it. We need to redress the balance in the music industry and give women in art a bigger platform.”

There will be camping facilities and yurt hire available at Pandora Fest. Adult tickets start from £25 can be purchased on the PandoraFest website.

New Band Of The Week: Vôdûn

Artists

Former TeamRock news desk member Christina joined our team in late 2015, and although her time working on online rock news was fairly brief, she made a huge impact by contributing close to 1500 stories. Christina also interviewed artists including Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and worked at the Download festival. In late 2016, Christina left rock journalism to pursue a career in current affairs. In 2021, she was named Local Weekly Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards.