With support from the California Arts Council, Women’s Audio Mission (WAM) will commission new work and provide a recording studio residency to the artists of Skip the Needle in WAM’s professional recording studios, culminating in a Local Sirens Concert featuring Skip the Needle in collaboration with two other BIPOC, female and gender-expansive musical artists, hosted at a premier venue in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Skip the Needle are an all-female, all-queer, and majority Black super group of Bay Area music legends who make music that addresses social justice issues and reclaims rock for women, for queer people, for Black people, “subverting people’s minds by injecting them with joy.” Local Sirens artist residencies/concerts provide a supportive space for BIPOC women/ gender-expansive artists to build community, create critical artist support systems, and engage with their communities.
WAM has consistently engaged thousands of women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals every year from historically marginalized communities over the last 22 years:
● Girls on the Mic (GotM) annually provides 2,000+ girls/gender-expansive youth from the most under-resourced communities in Northern California (96% low-income/93% BIPOC/ages 11-18) with free music production and media arts training that inspires them to amplify their voices and creativity.
● Local Sirens Concert Series serves 30-40+ under-represented women artists every year (majority low-income; 100% BIPOC) with performance opportunities at premier venues like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF Jazz, Brava, Dolby, The Independent, Rickshaw Stop, etc to audiences of 2,000+
● WAM’s Artist Residency programs provide free recording studio services and artist mentorship/development in WAM’s professional recording studios to 4-5 local female/gender-expansive artists each year, as well as digital distribution and promotion to expand their audience.
● WAM Core Training/ Adult Education provides music production and industry certification training to 500+ women/gender-expansive students every year
● Paid Internship program: WAM’s paid internship program serves 90 college-age women/gender-expansive young adults (94% low-income; 84% BIPOC)/year with education, career counseling, mentorship and job placement in creative careers at companies like Dolby, Pixar, Pandora, NPR, Sony, Disney, ESPN, etc.
● WAMCon is a national recording arts conference series for women/gender-expansive aspiring recording engineers and music producers. WAM has hosted dozens of conferences in Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, Boston, and virtually reaching 2,000+ women/gender-expansive people from 30+ countries and featuring music producers, songwriters and recording engineers who have worked with everyone from Selena Gomez to Cardi B to P!nk and Rihanna.

