Scan Magazine | Culture Feature | Statement Festival
Emma Knyckare, comedian, author and founder of Statement Festival. Photo: Kitty Lingmerth
Sweden’s first ‘man-free’ festival
– less controversial than you might think It all started with a tweet. Well, at least by the looks of things, that is how Statement Festival was born – but Swedish comedian Emma Knyckare, the initiator of Sweden’s first ‘man-free’ festival, explains that the real trigger was societal.
Knyckare. “I haven’t a clue about putting on festivals, but luckily I was able to gather this gang of amazing people with experience of all this stuff.”
By Linnea Dunne
“There’d been a huge amount of sexual assault at festivals in Sweden for years, and it peaked last summer,” Knyckare says. “It was the first day of my summer holidays and I was there watching the news and drinking cheap wine, as you do, when I heard that yet another rape had been reported. So I thought I’d tweet, and I never tweet, but I did.” The tweet – proposing a festival welcoming only non-men until all men have learnt to behave – got traction, and quickly. “I didn’t think much of it and went to bed, but when I woke up the day after I realised how many people actually really wanted this to happen. I got messages and emails 102 | Issue 110 | March 2018
and calls from journalists… but then I felt a bit cocky and thought it would be pretty cool, so I gathered a working group of 25 people, and two weeks later we had our first planning meeting in Stockholm.”
Funded by women and men A lot has happened since. The festival has been announced and garnered a heap of media attention, both in Sweden and internationally, and the working group has put hundreds of voluntary hours into everything from marketing and fundraising to booking and strategising. “Six months on, it’s pretty much the same people that are still working together to make this happen – still all voluntary,” says
Needless to say, fundraising was among the crucial first steps towards getting the festival off the ground. Amazingly, mostly with the use of social media, the team managed to reach its goal of crowdfunding half a million SEK (approximately £47,000) reasonably painlessly. Almost 3,500 supporters contributed, with prizes up for grabs for those who donated above a certain amount including a specially designed Statement piece of jewellery, a painting, and an in-house gig with Emma Knyckare herself. “It’s been fantastic, and when the early bird tickets went up for sale they all went in about eleven minutes. I think we’re the only festival ever to have sold tickets without even booking any acts yet!” Knyckare laughs. “It’s also