Afropunk founder: 'Our artists need to reflect our audience'

"If our audience is 70% female, it's important our artists reflect that," Afropunk co-founder, Matthew Morgan, tells Newsbeat.

He chatted to us at this weekend's London event about female acts and the future of indoor festivals.

Afropunk is an annual arts festival that celebrates black culture through music, art, design and skate.

There are plenty of women on this year's bill including Nadia Rose, NAO, Little Simz and Lianne la Havas.

"We try to create a space with no racism, no homophobia, no ableism or ageism," says Matthew.

"These are all things that are really important to us."

The first Afropunk festival took place back in 2005 in New York.

Now the festival, on its second year in London, happens in five cities around the world including New York, Paris, Atlanta, London and Johannesburg.

This instagram post is by @afropunk

Matthew spoke to Newsbeat about how some venues' reluctance to support black female artists was one of the driving forces behind the festival.

"I started AfroPunk from a few kneejerk reactions. One of them was that I used to manage an artist called Santigold," he says.

"She was in a band called Stiffed and I couldn't get her gigs because nobody wanted a black female in a punk band 17 years ago.

"So I created gigs for her to be able to perform at," he adds.

In recent years, some UK festivals have been criticised for the lack of female musicians and headline acts on their bills.

And it's a similar story around the world - Coachella Festival in California had its first female headliner in nine years this year when Lady Gaga stepped in to replace Beyonce.

Of the 32 artists and DJs performing at Afropunk this weekend 15 are female and three are mixed gender.

"Our artists need to reflect our audience, and our audience has always been supported by females," he says.

"If you have a 70% female audience, it's important your artists reflect that."

"There are so many incredible black female artists of all music genres.

"If they don't have the opportunity to play - we want to make sure we give them that opportunity," Matthew says.

The festival also has a history of being hosted indoors, last year at Alexandra Palace, this year at Printworks, so we asked Matthew why.

"A big part of why we're indoors is that our concept from day one was to take a festival into communities that don't normally go to festivals," he explains.

"I grew up in Stoke Newington as a young black kid and didn't go to a single festival."

He told Newsbeat how Afropunk's volunteering scheme helps to encourage people to come.

For a chance to earn a free ticket you can do voluntary work in local communities.

"I want to take what we do to the people - as opposed to asking them to come to some field with a bunch of people they don't necessarily feel comfortable with," he ends.

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