Rachel Barton and her company, Grape, are based at Tileyard London and craft exceptional audio entertainment that makes the world listen more closely.
Tell us about your background, your upbringing, and your introduction to the world of music.
I was born and brought up just outside Reading and I’d love to tell you that I came from a very cool musical family but in reality my parents loved Billy Joel, Queen and Simply Red. We also always listened to the radio in the car and at a very young age I remember my mum ringing the local station to get a shout out – I think that’s where my love of radio began!
How did you get into the music industry?
I was a dance music obsessed teenager and as soon as I was able to, I headed out to work a season in Ibiza, which was incredible. I came home tanned, skint and a little lost as to what to do next and then the following year I heard a competition on Radio 1 to find 3 people to work on 3 of the specialist shows. I applied for the dance role and after getting through various stages, managed to get the job! It was year’s traineeship to work on Pete Tong’s show with short periods of working in other departments such as marketing, live music and news. I moved up to London within 2 weeks and started work, then later that year I was asked to be part of the team to launch Annie Mac’s first show. I then stayed at Radio 1 for the next 10 years producing most of the dance shows and in 2011 I left to start Grape.
What were some of the barriers you experienced, or still do experience, as a woman in the music industry, if any?
Radio 1 was a balanced environment to work within, with really great gender diversity. However, my observations of the external music industry back then was that it was very male heavy and although in recent years it has improved, there are still far more males working in music than women, particularly in more senior positions. A few months back I was on a zoom call with 13 other people and I was the only woman, which felt pretty disappointing.
What would you say to your 16-year-old self about being a woman in music… what to expect, the difficulties, the excitements?
For many years I really didn’t think about being a woman in music – because I saw so many female peers and women in more senior positions, all of whom inspired me and showed me the way. I now know how privileged I was to have that experience!
I would say to my 16 year old self just to work as hard as you can, be as good as you can, be as dedicated as you can and it will pay off.
What other exciting things have you been working on lately, either work or personally?
We have a really exciting project coming soon with Amazon Music and Twitch – very excited to get the news out there in the coming weeks. And I remain incredibly proud of our BBC portfolio of shows – I love what we do.
What can we look forward to from Grape in the upcoming year?
More high-quality audio/visual entertainment, mainly within the dance music space. We have recently promoted some long-standing members of the team to more senior positions – Joe Gardner is now Grape’s Creative Director and Matt Healy and Nathan Goodman are Executive Producers. We also have an amazing team of Producers, Assistant Producers and Content Producers – building a team is really important to me as they are the lifeblood and the future of Grape.
