The BIT Collective on improving festival safety

We meet The BIT Collective at their community meet-up in Glasgow – an informal space for musicians, music-workers, even journalists to come together, connect, and chat about progress in the Scottish trad and folk scene. This time the topics range from debut album ambitions to Cosmopolitan cover shoots, to advice on teaching small children. They come together like this, over some drinks in Mono, once a month.

BIT started off the back of the #MeToo movement, originally functioning as a space for people to talk confidentially about their experiences. Since then, it's grown into an important organisation in the traditional arts industry, undertaking reports into the experiences of women and gender diverse people in folk music, and getting conversations started around inclusivity and diversity in the sector. Like any good folk song, the tale of where the name came from has a hundred different variations (chair Jen Anderson thinks it comes from a ‘bit’ in terms of data storage, “but it's now become just, you make up your own acronym”).

As we're sat round the table in Mono, members of the team tell us about their new initiative aimed at Scottish trad and trad-adjacent festivals, BIT Collective On Tour. It's an interactive project that involves dialogue between BIT and partner festivals around how they can promote the Collective’s work in a bespoke way that matches the needs and tone of each individual event. Ultimately the goal is to empower festivals around Scotland to protect the safety of their artists, staff, volunteers and attendees, no matter the approach.

“Some festivals want us to go along, and they want to programme something," Anderson explains: "It might be that it's simply speaking to festivals about putting flyers within their artist packs to just get people thinking about their behaviour, and thinking about what support is available should they need it. Everything we're doing at the moment is building towards something much bigger. It's a lot of fact finding, it's a lot of figuring out what engagement looks like and what different stakeholders need.”

At the moment they're reaching out to festivals to find out who has safeguarding policies in place, what those look like and how they're embedded in the practices of an organisation. All of this, they hope, will feed into being able to create a resource hub on their website where anyone – musician, promoter, manager, fan – can look for template documents and examples of best practice across all genres and areas. The dream is that long term this will become a resource for people working across other genres and other parts of the industry.

Through this process, they're keen to use the great work already being done by some within the sector to help others to improve their own practices: Piping Live and the National Piping Centre, HebCelt and Edinburgh TradFest are names that come up again and again.

And it's this idea of trying to create positive change that is key to BIT’s future – Anderson, like so many people, is deeply affected every time a new report is published, or discourse aired that sheds light on sexual violence and harassment in the scene. She wants BIT to propose a way forward, so that people have something to focus on besides just being crushed by despair. “I don't like listening to it," Anderson says. "For obvious reasons, it's very important that I do, but what I want to push… is what can be done. And this is what BIT Collective have been trying to do for quite a few years now – focus on what can be done.”

BIT Collective Picks

With festivals on the horizon, The BIT Collective pick some of their favourite female-led acts to look out for this festival season

Sian
The beloved trio of Gaelic singers create harmonies that are beautiful, simple and catchy. Catch them at Stonehaven Folk Festival, 10 Jul; HebCelt, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, 18 Jul and Ceòl Cholasa, Isle of Colonsay, 17 Sep.

Kinnaris Q
Kinnaris Q bring beautiful texturing to their unique brand of contemporary folk, played across fiddle, guitar, mandolin and five-string fiddle. Expect tunes to drive and elevate you. They play The Reeling, Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh, 20 Jun and Ceòl Cholasa, Isle of Colonsay, 19 & 20 Sep.

ASTRO BLOC
ASTRO BLOC take longer-form trad composition and mix in influences from around the world. Think jazz-influenced piano and celestial electronic interventions. They play Edinburgh TradFest, 1 May and Speyfest, Moray, 24 & 26 Jul.

Ellie Beaton
Winner of the 2025 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year award, Beaton champions Doric and Aberdeenshire-style singing in her work. She plays Orkney Folk Festival, 21 May; Arran Folk Festival, Arran, 5-7 Jun; Speyfest, Moray, 26 Jul; The Hub, Edinburgh International Festival, 7 Aug.

Siobhan Miller
The only four-time winner of Best Singer at the BBC Alba Scots Trad Music Awards, Miller specialises in stirring folk songs, new and classic alike. She plays Lochwinnoch Arts Festival, Renfrewshire, 25 Apr; Loch Goil Live, Lochgoilhead Village Hall, 1 May.

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Find out more about The BIT Collective on their website thebitcollective.co.uk or on Instagram @thebitcollective
The next BIT Collective Community Meet-up takes place Thursday 9 April, Mono, Glasgow, 6pm