BriDJing Releases Its Toolkit: A Transnational Guide to Gender Equity in Electronic Music

BriDJing Womxn is proud to announce the release of “A Transnational Toolkit for Gender Equity in Electronic Music — Artists, Professionals, and Institutions in Dialogue,” a free, downloadable resource for anyone working to build a more inclusive music industry.

Since it began, BriDJing has set out to build bridges, between countries, artistic practices, and communities, in support of women and gender-minority artists in electronic music. Led by three committed cultural organisations, La Fabrique Art Studio (Tunisia), Festival Africolor (France), and Tulla Culture Center (Albania), and co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme, the project took shape through artistic residencies, online training modules, professional roundtables, and public showcases across all three partner countries.

The Toolkit released today is the culmination of that work on the ground. It draws on lessons from the residencies held in Tunis, Paris, and Tirana, on feedback from the artists who took part in the BriDJing Career Take-Off Programme (BCTO), and on discussions held throughout the project’s professional gatherings.

Why This Toolkit?

The electronic music sector still reproduces deep inequalities: underrepresentation on lineups, funding disparities, unsafe working environments, and exclusionary networks. In response, BriDJing Womxn set out to document what actually works on the ground, and to offer a replicable framework for cultural managers, festival curators, artist collectives, and public institutions alike.

The Toolkit is both practical and political. Rather than simply naming the problem, it offers concrete tools, recommendations drawn directly from lived project experience, and clear pathways for anyone looking to shift their own practices.

What’s Inside

The guide is structured around six core themes:

• Understanding gender inequality in electronic music and its intersectional dimensions (gender, race, class, disability, sexual orientation);
• Designing inclusive, safe residencies and learning spaces: artist selection, safe spaces as lived practice rather than a label, collaborative pedagogy, and burnout prevention for staff and facilitators;
• Developing gender-sensitive career support programmes: mentorship, peer support, personalised coaching, and tackling impostor syndrome;
• Rethinking programming and artist circulation: co-curation, support for artist mobility (visas, administrative barriers), and equitable professional conditions;
• Inclusive and responsible communication: writing artist bios without stereotyping, avoiding tokenism, and engaging partners in shared, inclusive language;
• Policy and institutional recommendations for funders, festivals, and cultural institutions — making the case that inclusion is a core responsibility, not an optional upgrade.

Each chapter closes with a set of actionable key takeaways. The Toolkit also includes ready-to-use tools: a code of conduct / safe space agreement template, a residency planning checklist, inclusive application form templates, communication guides, and a detailed glossary of more than 60 terms (chosen mixity, safer space, intersectionality, mobility justice, tokenism, and more).

Three Regions, Three Realities

One of the Toolkit’s most valuable contributions is its transnational perspective. The three partners worked across strikingly different contexts: an established French electronic music scene with over two decades of infrastructure, alongside still-emerging scenes in Tunisia and Albania, set against widely varying levels of legal protection for LGBTQIA+ people across the three countries. Rather than imposing a single model, the Toolkit shows how to adapt inclusive practices to local realities while holding onto a shared core of values.

An Open Resource for Everyone

This Toolkit is designed for anyone working toward a fairer music industry: cultural managers and producers, festival curators and bookers, artists and collectives, and policymakers and funders. It’s meant as a living document — one to be adapted, expanded, and built upon by the wider community of practice.

Download the Toolkit for free.

BriDJing Womxn is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only.