Equity and Diversity Statement

 

We want Ignite Imaginations to be for all of Sheffield.

 

We want the voices of the communities we work in to be loud and clear in our decision making and planning, and for people from many different walks of life to be visible and reflected in our staff, artist pool and board of trustees. 

 

We are committed to investing in our people, creating safe spaces for everyone and finding creative ways to ensure that everyone feels welcome and can be included in what we do.

 

We work across many communities in Sheffield and recognise that our staff, board and artists do not reflect the full breadth of the people we engage with through our projects.

 

As a way to focus our efforts in developing accessible and meaningful ways for more voices to be heard in developing, managing and delivering within the organisation our Equity and Diversity sub group (made up of staff, artists and board members) have developed the below tasks for us to work on (these will be reviewed annually);

 

2023-2024 actions and goals:

 

• Leadership representation:

• 1. Recruit up to 2 more boards members that represent the communities we work with.

  2. Open up membership of the Equity and Diversity sub group to artists and community partners.

  3. We have created our Creative Community scheme- inviting current and previous participants to support the development of the organisation and ideas for delivery in exchange for free creative, networking and learning opportunities. We will continue to build this groups' membership.

 

• Artist representation:​

  1. We are working on our Workshop Assistants Programme to engage, train and support emerging talent from our community projects into paid positions within the organisation. Our next step is to formalise the route from workshop assistant to assistant artist. 

  2. Develop mentoring and coaching skills within the artists pool to support our workshop assistants in their progression.

  3. Deliver another mentoring delivery project for emerging artists.

 

• Reporting and tracking:

 

1. Continue to include reporting on the protected characteristics make up of our staff, board and artist within in our annual report

2. Develop ways to ensure the data we are using can be compared with relevant figures locally and nationally and create actions to reach into underrepresented communities. 

3. Develop ways we can better gather data about our participant reach.

 

• Training and education:

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1. We will continue to build in relevant and required training into our offer- our next step will be around safe spaces and managing difficult conversations.

2. Create equity and diversity training as part of all new recruits inductions

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We know this is just the start and we are keen to learn, listen and be challenged as we continue to work hard to create representative and equitable opportunities within our organisation.

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