Things to consider before hiring an intern

We do not expect you to be able to provide or account for the full list below. However, we see it as an important part of this program that you have conversations in your team about these topics and questions. 

If you get selected as a participating festival, we will provide you with an online workshop, where you will be guided in some of the topics and where you will be able to ask questions in regard to the questions below.

• How is the gender balance in your team? Will the new intern help balance the gender-split in your team better? 
• Would the intern be the only person of their gender in their work groups? In that case, it can be relevant to give them other points of contact in your festival team. 
• In case someone in your company is discriminated against or harassed, do you have a formalized and transparent process and point of contact to deal with it?
• Do you have a safe, inclusive onboarding process for interns and other employees that makes them feel welcome and gives them the best chance at a successful internship?
• Does your company use inclusive language in its communication (people-first, gender-neutral pronouns, encourage group feeling in language and comms, intersectional viewing)?
• Do you create safe spaces in your company to listen to your employees’ concerns and for conversations, feedback and empathy?
• Will you include the intern in important meetings and projects, so they feel valued and as if their work mattered?
• Do you have the capacity to help the intern on their further way in the industry after the internship?

Create an inclusive work environment

Interns will be able to make the most of their internship, when they are able to work in an inclusive environment in which they feel welcome and accepted. All of the people on your team, not only the interns, would benefit from such an environment, particularly newcomers of any kind, because it helps them integrate into the team faster. 

If you are selected as a festival, we invite you to participate in our free mandatory preparatory online workshop. It will take place in February 2026 (exact date t.b.c.). We recommend bringing as many team members who will be working with the intern as possible. In the workshop, you will learn more about working in diverse teams and we will present you some advanced tools that you can use to create a more inclusive work culture. 

Here are some basic sources that you can use to start preparing on your own: 

• YOUROPE’s Diversity & Inclusion Toolset. This collection of resources explains different kinds of discrimination prevalent in the music industry – e.g. based on disability, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity – and shows you how to tackle them at your own event. Dedicated to improving live events for artists, visitors, and teams. Includes guides, reports, tests, checklists, interviews, databases, toolkits, roadmaps, reports, games and action plans. 
• If you are not familiar with terms often used in conversations on diversity, equity and inclusion, check out the glossary of the Diversity & Inclusion Toolset. It explains commonly used terms relating to accessibility, anti-racism, and gender like “bias”, “FLINTA*”, “cisgender”, “BIPoC”, “intersectionality” and many more.
• ‘Musicians’ Census – Musicians from the Global Majority Insight Report’. Authored by Help Musicians, Black Lives in Music and the UK Musicians’ Union, the ‘Musicians’ Census’ compiled data collected from 624 UK-based musicians who identified as belonging to the global majority (basically meaning all non-white people). The survey offers an interesting snapshot of the ethnicity pay gap (almost  £1,000 between white respondents and those identifying as global majority), regularly occurring experiences of racism, and a lack of reporting of such incidents. For all music entities, including festivals, these findings are extremely important to get an understanding of how discriminatory practices are still affecting the lives of artists from the global majority and to raise awareness of these issues. 
• Another Life’s Social Sustainability and Recruiting handbook. The handbook is designed to help cultural organizations work more socially sustainable on topics like work environment, recruitment and employee retention. It is based on social sustainability studies and reports, international guidelines and directives, experiences from the business sector, qualitative interviews with workers in music and culture, as well as knowledge and data from Another Life’s other reports and studies. The handbook contains a number of concrete tips and awareness points on how to focus on social sustainability in different parts of the recruitment process, from the first steps of understanding and improving the work environment to designing the job advert and retaining employees.

What we need from the interns

After the internships, interns must provide a short written report in English including:

• Their personal experiences at the organization / at the festival
• Areas they were able to take a glimpse into
• Challenges they encountered
• Things they learned
• Whether they want to stay in the festival industry and why
• Photos of their work and/or them working

They can easily create the report by filling out an online form that we will provide you with later. We will summarize all reports in a final document about the 3F Diversity Internship Support that we must provide to the EU. Since the EU sponsors this program, this report is obligatory. It helps us prove to the EU that we used their funding as intended. Please tell the interns about the importance of this report at the start of the internship, so they can prepare it during their work. The submitted report together with a signed agreement between festival organization and the 3F project management will trigger the transfer of the funding.

The role of YOUROPE

As a facilitator, the YOUROPE Office will act as a main contact for the participating festivals. Our tasks include:

• providing the “jury” who will evaluate the applications and choose the four participating festivals annually and who is composed of leading experts from the association’s network
• facilitating a free mandatory preparatory workshop for participating festivals
• serving as a general contact for festivals 
• serving as an emergency contact during internships for festivals 
• being open to all questions / suggestions; a problem solver 
• opening up the YOUROPE network to interns looking for connections and follow-up job opportunities 

Names and contacts of the YOUROPE team members will be provided to the participants.

Apply

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Disclaimer:

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.