Felicity Wilcox: Composer and Senior Lecturer, Music & Sound Design Program, FASS
About my work
I am a strong advocate for gender equity, diversity and inclusion in the music industry in Australia – as Chair (2017-2020) and co-founder of the Gender Equity Committee of the Australian Guild of Screen Composers (AGSC) – and at UTS. I am presently conducting a study, funded by the UTS School of Communications and in partnership with music rights organisation APRA-AMCOS, which examines gender in the music industry and we are hoping to collect new data about women’s representation and gender-diverse composers who are absent from most studies to-date. This will result in an industry report for APRA-AMCOS and include recommendations that positively impact on the music industry in Australia and New Zealand.
I recently published a book about female-identifying screen composer's work with Routledge, ‘Women's Music for the Screen -Diverse Narratives in Sound,’ which is the first book on this topic and provides a scholarly resource for academics to use in teaching and research to address a lack of scholarship about women’s music. I will be implementing this as a teaching text at UTS for ‘Screen Soundtrack Production’ in 2022 and have encouraged my colleagues to do the same.
I am also a member of the UTS Ally program, which has created a network of empathetic people who are allies of students and staff belonging to a sexual or gender minority. In my facilitation of our academic program at UTS, I actively apply a gendered lens to all aspects of my teaching and subject coordination. This might be around making sure female students nominate for opportunities, matching students of different genders for collaboration to avoid stereotyping and exclusion, and speaking to the systemic sexism in my industry in an honest, but positive way as a role model for women in my field.
A memorable win
My efforts to ensure female and non-binary students in my academic program nominate themselves for competitive internships through ‘shoulder-tapping’ has had the effect of boosting the number of female and non-binary students being selected into internships.
I recently published a book about female-identifying screen composer's work with Routledge, ‘Women's Music for the Screen-Diverse Narratives in Sound’, which is the first book on this topic. The book provides a scholarly resource for academics to use in teaching and research to address a lack of scholarship about women’s music. I will also implement the book as a teaching text in my subject at UTS, ‘Screen Soundtrack Production’ in 2022. Additionally, my impending study in collaboration with APRA-AMCOS will include recommendations that positively impact on the music industry in Australia and New Zealand.
Felicity Wilcox is an interdisciplinary composer and academic whose output encompasses concert music, film music, songwriting and improvisation, music for theatre, installation, live events, dance and radio. She has received commissions for many leading artists and ensembles, including The Australia Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, Ironwood, The Song Company, Sydney Festival, Vivid Sydney, Decibel, Sydney Art Quartet, the Australia Piano Quartet, and individual performers. Her compositions are performed and broadcast across Australia and internationally.
Felicity’s background as a screen composer informs her individual practice. Under the alias Felicity Fox, she has worked extensively as a composer and music director, with a highlight being her role as Assistant Music Director and Composer for the Paralympic Games opening Ceremony in Sydney 2000. She has composed, recorded and produced the soundtracks to over 60 productions for film and television, and has received multiple ARIA, AFI and APRA/AGSC awards and nominations for her scores. Her soundtracks are broadcast on major television networks and have featured in international film festivals such as Berlin, New York, London, Paris, Chicago, Venice, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Margaret Mead (NYC) and Toronto.
Felicity completed her PhD in composition for multimedia in 2013 at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and holds a position as Senior Lecturer in Music and Sound Design at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Websites
Official website: www.felicitywilcox.com
UTS profile page: https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Felicity.Wilcox
Articles by Felicity about Gender Equity: https://www.felicitywilcox.com/press
