Over the next few months Diverse City would love to meet up with Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) theatre producers with passion, creativity and drive, to produce work for regional and national touring. Ideally producers will have some experience of indoor theatre, booking tours and partnership working.
We have productions in development, including a new show with work in progress showings at Bristol Old Vic Ferment Fortnight (July 2019) and High Tide Festival (Sept 2019), prior to premiering at Bristol Old Vic (Jan 2020 tbc).
The Creative Case for Diversity
Arts Council England’s recent Creative Case for Diversity report highlighted some bleak trends in the cultural sector. There has been slow progress on diversifying the workforce within some of England’s largest arts organisations. Just 5% of NPO staff identify as disabled, 12% identify as BAME, despite 20% and 16% respectively making up the working age population. Arts Professional recently reported university pathways into the arts are amongst the least ethnically diverse in the country. BAME students in arts degrees increased between 2014 to 2018 by just 1.2%.
New initiatives across the arts are emerging, with a focus on connecting with under represented communities and individuals. Killer Women is a new mentoring scheme for emerging female crime writers from BAME and working-class backgrounds. 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning is taking applications for ‘Factory’, a fully funded creative development program for BAME creatives aged 18-25. The Arts Council have launched research into representation in children’s literature, after a recent report showed only 1% of children’s books published in the UK in 2017 had a BAME main character.
Organisations looking to support companies to diversify their workforce are also finding the limelight. Creative Access aim to make it easy for companies to hire smart, dedicated talent from BAME backgrounds and other difficult to reach communities. Sour Lemons‘ motto is ‘any sour lemon can become lemonade’. They run creative leadership programmes to level the playing field for young leaders.
“We recognise the chronic lack of representation with regards to race, ethnicity and disability in the arts and our role in changing this.
Claire Hodgson, Joint Artistic Director, Diverse City
We must take positive action right now to be part of the solution, not continue to part of the problem.”
Diverse City looking for BAME Producers
We would love to meet up with Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) theatre producers. If you are interested in working with Diverse City, please send us a CV, plus a 2 minute phone-camera video about who you are and how we could work together, to [email protected].
We will get in touch to arrange a conversation during April and May 2019.
