By William Kroger
Content producing and promotion is like playing Russian Roulette or Texas Hold’em Poker and waiting for the river card to see how strong your hand is. However, life as someone trying to make a difference and dealing with personal challenges while playing roulette is a whole new level and most of the time you’re faced with a flop.
My name is Will and I’m also known as “Defwill”. Sounds catchy right? But the true meaning behind the name is that I’m hard hearing in both ears and will go deaf later in life. I’m currently five subjects away from completing a Bachelor of Entertainment Industries and will finish a Diploma of Audio Production at SAE, to then receive my dual Diploma of Event Management and Travel and Tourism which I embarked on back in 2016 at TAFE Queensland.
During my time studying, I’ve become a DJ in the House and Techno scene, an advocate and public speaker for accessibility in nightlife and festivals, a festival freelancer and a content promoter for “Là Vibrations”. You can usually find me at Capulet in the valley as a sound producer building my artist brand on years of experience.
The Australian music scene has recently been pushed back into the dark ages again for live and electronic music. The New South Wales Liberal Governments has completely discounted the opinions of content producers in favour of condemning festival culture. We saw Queensland adopting lock-out laws soon after NSW which is a total failure and has caused the closure of venues, reducing entertainment opportunities.
Since attacks on festival culture, festivals like Bluesfest, Psy-Fi and Rabbits Eat Lettuce follow by many more have hinted at moving or pulling the plug which could whip out billions of dollars from the economy from the Tourism and entertainment sectors. Why does tourism play a huge part? Because these brands have attracted people from around the globe to inject money into the economy. Rainbow Serpent in Victoria brings tens of thousands of people every year. Plus, for the first time in recent years, Earth Frequency Festival in Queensland sold out.
The demographic is changing, and these festivals formally known as “doofs” or “hippy fests” are not what they used to be. People with disabilities and parts of the mainstream is slowly changing the way they see festivals. This is according to the 2018 National Panel at the Electronic Music Conference in Sydney which was hosted by Jane Slingo, featuring SASHA and Digweed and Greg Wilson which discussed the global perspective and philosophy within the scene. These discussions about how to make small changes to the venues, and get promoters and councils thinking to ensure that people are treated as human beings.
Recently Earth Frequency Festival made the last-minute decision to promote me from volunteer to staff and take over the disabilities department as a disability manager to work with all departments within the festival. This included Operations Department, Artists Management, Medical and Emergency Department, Stage and Content production Department, Media and Marketing and Queensland. Why the police? Well most people with challenges can’t handle the sometimes confronting nature of the police and need someone to help them to communicate to ensure they aren’t unjustly punished.
To combat the war on music, the, “Don’t Kill the Live Music” campaign has attracted over 100,000 signatures and 12,000 people attending a rally in Hyde Park in Sydney via social media. The rally had special guests like Michael Chugg (Chugg Entertainment), Murray Cook (Wiggles), Julien Hamilton (The Presets) and many more supporting the music scene in Sydney.
My advice for all Creative Industries students, is be prepared for last minute requests and rush jobs and be prepared to be flexible. Most of all be authentic about your identity and feel free keep questioning the lecturer’s knowledge about the creative industries subject.
