ARC is proud to support the statement denouncing racism, but we understand that we now need to demonstrate our support through action and allow ourselves to be held accountable by our colleagues and peers across the North East by making our commitments public.
The following actions have been identified through discussions and conversations with Board members and staff over the past few months:
We recognise that we need to educate ourselves:
- We will create a resource list and ask all staff and Board members to choose one of them to read, watch or listen to, and to share a short reflection with other staff, either verbally or in writing.
- We will pay artists of colour to advise on policies and procedures, including selection and recruitment processes for staff roles and artist initiatives.
- We will develop an internal resource to support everyone to feel confident around the use of language.
- We will arrange anti-racism training for all staff and Board members.
We recognise that our workforce is not representative:
- We will review our recruitment practices to identify new ways of recruiting that result in a more representative workforce, developing a new written recruitment procedure.
- We will appoint a person of colour with programming or marketing skills to work in a role within our team, to ensure their lived experience is represented in this area of work.
- We will increase our pool of creative learning practitioners to include more artists of colour.
We recognise that our artistic programme must address many years of under-representation:
- We will ensure that at least 20% of our supported artists are artists of colour.
- Through our Artist of Change initiative, we will identify new ways of ensuring that artists of colour are able to influence our programme.
- Through delivery of our cinema development programme, we will increase the number of films led by people of colour screened in our cinema.
- As individuals, we will seek to deepen the relationships we already have with people of colour from our communities, through active conversations and listening.
We will hold ourselves accountable:
- We will publish data on the diversity of our workforce and supported artists annually on our website.
- We will review progress against this plan at the end of March 2022 and agree new actions for the following year.
In addition, the following teams/departments will identify a departmental action for 2021-22:
- Board
- Programming
- Marketing
- Finance
- Box Office
- Technical
- No 60
- Front of House
We recognise intersectionality and will continue our work to ensure that people of colour who are also disabled and/or LGBTQIA and/or working class are included in our workforce, programme and audiences.
All of the agreed actions will be implemented and completed by 31 March 2022.
Annabel Turpin
Chief Executive & Artistic Director
On behalf of ARC Board and staff members
Date of pledge: 24/03/2020