Pollstar (10/16/20) Speer, Deborah

Diversify The Stage is a project to enable the hiring of underrepresented touring professionals and deliver education, mentoring, and internships for young people to enter the live industry. The initiative was started by Fitz And The Tantrums singer Noelle Scaggs, who tapped her network of industry associates; this led her to Nine Inch Nails tour manager Jerome Crooks, who founded the Never Famous online resource for hiring touring pros. Scaggs and Crooks partnered on Diversify The Stages, and the coronavirus pandemic is serving the effort by giving the industry a time for reflection, and opportunities to reboot in terms of diversity and establish hiring goals for when tours can resume. "What I've been noticing the most are the number of individuals that are actually working towards actionable goals," Scaggs says. "They're putting their best foot forward with creating quantifiable evidence going forward. They're trying to establish the data of the makeup of their internal teams at their companies and working towards trying to bring in more diversity in those roles."

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