PRS Foundation continues celebration of International Women’s Day
Earlier this year at Abbey Road, we celebrated Women Make Music’s impact and called for industry support to address gender inequity – find out more.
We also celebrated International Women’s Day and this year, we decided to use IWD to launch a celebration of the amazing women in our team. As well as celebrating the incredible Music Creators we support, we shine a spotlight on the amazing women in our team.
From Keychange to Women Make Music, from the London Symphony Orchestra to Creative Europe, from artist management to radio and podcast production and so much MORE – our team is full of outstanding women who are passionate about music and talent development. And we want to celebrate them!
Each week we will be spotlighting a member of the team, continuing this week with our Senior Grants and Programmes Manager – Becci Scotcher.
Becci Scotcher
Music has always been my passion. Whilst at high school, I quickly realised that despite my ambitions to be on stage, I was better suited behind the scenes. I was lucky to discover lots of empowering women; artists such as Veruca Salt or Garbage (yes, my teenage years were in the late 90s) but the majority of my friends in bands or the people supporting their careers around them locally, were all men.
It’s safe to say that my journey in the music industry has been a winding and multifaceted one. Like most women in the industry during the early 2000s, the only roles which I felt I could make an impact in are ones which are, still to this day, seen as the ‘softer’ roles in areas such as marketing and PR.
I quickly realised, that’s not the case and I’ve worked across labels, tech, non-profit, live, licensing and PR, in roles covering PR, marketing, sponsorship, event curation, artist booking, event and conference production, international development, programme development, business development, sync, multi-nation & territory, campaigns, content creation, and developed talent development programmes.
From the time I booked the iconic, Future of the Left to perform at Wales Millennium Centre as part of Welsh Music Foundation’s 10-year anniversary celebrations, which was broadcast on the six o’clock news; to creating the first ever app for WOMEX the world music trade expo in 2013; leading the first ever multi-nation export partnership with all 4 UK Nations, to modifying many of PRS Foundation’s funding programmes, so that creators still had the opportunity to create in such difficult times. It’s really hard to pick one thing that I’m most proud of, with such an array of experiences but my passion areas have and I think always will be, partnerships and export.
In most of my roles, I think unusually for the time but less so now, I’ve had some incredible, tenacious, empowering and forward-thinking women leaders, who’ve supported me on my journey, all of whom have enabled me to have the incredible career I’ve had to date, so I’d be remiss for me not to thank them here. I’ve also worked with and managed equally, incredible women (and those who identify as men or gender expansive) who inspire me constantly. My team at PRS Foundation are one in a million, dedicated to supporting talent to be the best it can be and despite being such a small team, punch well above their weight.
The thing for me which gets me out of bed each day, is collaboration and connection, what I love about the music industry (beyond the music, of course), are the people who I’ve met through work who I now call friends.
At the core of it all though, is to ensure that talented creators get the best opportunities to have sustainable careers they can regardless of their background. Working together in partnership both domestically and internationally is how we can nurture talent. Nothing gives me goosebumps more than seeing an incredible music creator (who I may have had a small part in their progress), such as Violet Skies, Little Sims, Nova Twins, Steph Marziano, performing or hearing their creativity released into the world, and I’ve been privileged enough to experience many of those moments.
