Creating Better Workplaces Across the Audio & Live Entertainment Industries

SoundGirls has developed a new series of Best Practices Guides for recording studios, touring productions, live venues, and event organizations.

We created these guides because the environments where we work matter.

Audio and live entertainment are built on collaboration. Whether we are recording an album, mixing a film, designing sound for a game, working on tour, producing a festival, or running a venue, our work depends on people trusting one another, communicating effectively, and bringing their expertise to a shared goal.

These can also be challenging workplaces. Long hours, freelance employment, extensive travel, close working conditions, rapidly changing environments, and uneven power dynamics can create barriers that have nothing to do with someone’s ability to do their job.

Our goal with these guides is practical: to help the people who shape these workplaces create professional environments where everyone has the opportunity to do their best work.

The guides address creating safer and more welcoming workplaces for women, transgender and gender-expansive people, people with disabilities, neurodivergent professionals, parents and caregivers, and people of different faiths, races, cultures, ages, and backgrounds.

This isn’t about lowering standards or providing special treatment. It is about removing unnecessary barriers, setting clear expectations, improving communication, addressing safety and accessibility, and building workplace cultures based on professionalism and respect.

A great workplace doesn’t happen accidentally. Culture is created through everyday decisions: how people are hired and onboarded, how facilities are provided, how concerns are handled, how crews communicate, how leaders respond when problems arise, and whether everyone is given the tools and information they need to succeed.

These guides are intended to provide a starting point.

We hope production managers, studio owners, venue managers, engineers, producers, event organizers, artists, crew members, educators, and employers will use them to start conversations, evaluate existing practices, and identify changes that can make our workplaces stronger.

Because creating an inclusive workplace isn’t separate from doing excellent work.

It is part of doing excellent work.

You can download these guides  – and hope you will share them across the industry. Please email us at soundgirls@soundgirls with resources that can be added to these guides.

Creating Safe, Respectful & Professional Touring Environments

Creating Safe, Respectful & Professional Live Venues, Festivals & Events

Creating Safe, Respectful & Professional Recording Environments