The Journey
By Christine Goodall, Coordinator, HEAR Network
Where are we coming from?
I recall David and Cordelia from Flourishing Lives coming to see me one day back in September 2019, after being introduced by email by the Age Allies project members Age UK London from our Steering Group.
We talked about their planned work to bring together arts and well-being professionals from across the Flourishing Lives Coalition and representatives from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups for open and exploratory conversations focused on how arts organisations could improve their inclusive practice to ensure that people from a BAME background are genuinely engaged, And further, that this would increase the direct involvement of these communities in the development of cultural programmes. They were working on this idea with the Race Equality Foundation and asked if HEAR, as an intersectional pan-equality network, would like to contribute.
A key component of the idea was to ensure the fairer distribution of resources, so that BAME-led arts organisations could also play a key role in discussions and solutions, with the hope that the often-evidenced link between the arts and improvements in wellbeing would be better extended to BAME communities.
So a BAME Inclusion Steering Group was brought together and a number of activities were delivered in 2020, including two round table discussions bringing together the members of the Steering Group and a wide range of arts and well-being professionals, to share experiences, learning and good practice in inclusion, and develop a set of good practice guidelines. The Steering Group has grown and is now an Action and Advisory Group, and includes representatives from Ubele and Decolonising the Archive, as well as a number of individuals representing wellbeing and arts. In August we had the valuable opportunity to present the findings from our round tables to over 30 London local authority culture teams, and in September convened an informal peer learning discussion to share experiences of inclusion during lockdown and how we could make it central to the Covid recovery phase.
But we wanted to do more! We wanted to try and influence structural change, embedding inclusion and lived experience in every stage of cultural activity. Our vision is to cultivate system change in inclusive practice in arts and wellbeing services across London. We want to do this across the whole system; from grass roots activity to the board room, from decision-making about funding and resourcing to programming to how we determine the environment of our cultural buildings and public spaces. We want to change diversity and inclusion from what can often feel like a ‘tick-box’ exercise to a profoundly inclusive practice where people from a black, Asian and minority ethnic background are genuinely engaged and directly involved in the creation, development and delivery of cultural programmes and where lived experience is front and centre. We want arts and wellbeing organisations to genuinely reflect and amplify the multicultural, pluralistic voices of all of London’s communities.
We have now been fortunate to receive a small pot of funding from Baring Foundation to deliver a six month programme of work to take us further towards this vision. Please come and join us!
What are we doing?
The Network will be engaged in a range of activities which will be directly linked to action and supporting organisations to make change. This includes three roundtable discussions, the first of these is identified in this newsletter with a link to sign up to attend; a transformation project with an arts agency to work alongside them to support strategic change across the organisation; and some action learning activities which will see particular challenges addressed in a real life setting to affect change. We are keen to hear from arts organisations or health and social care projects who have identified something they would like to tackle and are keen to work with this group to do just that.
How can you join in?
Join the Action and Advisory Group – we have two spaces for individuals who want to be involved in overseeing the project
Attend events such as the roundtable discussions that will take place
Sign up to receive our newsletter
We know that for many artists, volunteers and small groups it can be a real challenge trying to participate when you are not being paid for your time or because you need some support to do so. That is why we have allocated funds to ensure that
all those we ask to present at our events or represent the network will be paid to do so
up to five individuals can receive a small payment to attend each roundtable
applications can be made from our accessibility fund to support participation (this is for things like an interpreter)
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