Duncan Sones is looking forward – to a more culturally diverse and inclusive arts industry. As Chief Executive of arts training and development organisation, Metier, Sones observes while the company has been investing for the better part of 20 years in ethnic diversity programmes – not much has changed in that time in terms of attitudes towards inclusion of marginalised groups in the arts. But he now hopes that Metier’s new Creative Renewal scheme will change all that.
‘We [Metier] ourselves have struggled to create an organisation that is as diverse as we would like it to be. We were very conscious of the fact that those issues were common across the wider sector,’ says Sones, who is also Creative Renewal’s Project Manager.
‘Part of what we wanted to look at was the way in which the arts works as a vehicle for people to re-engage with learning and… countering social exclusion.’
The initiative prioritises people who have experienced institutionalised discrimination, addressing issues such as gender stereotyping, people with disabilities, from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds, and individuals from areas considered to be suffering from multiple deprivation.
The underlying strand of the scheme, Sones adds, is employability. ‘We’re looking at arts as a vehicle for improving people’s employment prospects within the arts,’ he explains.
Creative Renewal is a programme led by Metier to promote diversity and greater accessibility in the arts and cultural sectors. The aim, according to Metier, is to research, develop and test methods for overcoming the barriers to employment and career progression faced by groups suffering discrimination in the arts and entertainment labour market.
The project, which has already begun and will continue through to March 2005, has received in excess of £2.5 million from the European Social Fund (ESF) Community Initiative, ‘Equal.’ More than 30 arts organisations are partners in the programme, which also engages national agencies, government departments and six European partner organisations.
Each participating arts establishment was awarded £50,000 from the EU funds – which required the organisations to raise matched funding – before producing a work plan. The overall programme includes research, training and evaluation strands, with each organisation carrying out either research or training – or both – based on the individual needs of the company.
A wide range of partners are taking part in the scheme, from smaller arts organisations to larger establishments, like the Tate and the Royal National Theatre. The latter, Sones explains, is involved in a unique partnership with a sister theatre, the Albany, in Deptford, supporting training and development. ‘One of our most highly funded organisations is partnering one of our least funded organisations,’ he comments.
Dance UK and Women in Music are two other arts organisations taking part in the initiative – and representatives from both expressed the hope that the projects currently being implemented will continue to inspire future learning.
Women in Music (WiM), for example, is creating a professional development scheme based around mentoring opportunities for women creators of music.
Clare Adams, WiM Projects Officer, hopes the programme will encourage women to actively pursue a career in music, and challenge what she believes is an area where women are still under-represented.
‘Existing research – and indeed a quick glance at venue and media programming – clearly indicates women are under-represented as creators of music’, she observes. ‘It is hoped that our scheme will help empower individual women to move forward in their chosen careers, and create greater visibility and recognition for women musicians as a whole.’
Adams commented the Professional Development scheme was an important step for WiM – and a first for the organisation.
‘This is the first time we will be able to offer a structure to facilitate learning and training opportunities for our members,’ she says. ‘Evaluation will form an important part of the project, and lessons learnt will be of use to ourselves and other small membership organisations wishing to develop similar initiatives in the future.’
At Dance UK, Director Jeanette Siddall says the particular focus of the scheme is to look at ways of making a career in dance more sustainable and attractive to a wider cross-section of the population. The organisation is conducting research into areas such as pay negotiation, commissioning and career pathways for artistic directors, while providing work placement opportunities for budding choreographers and information seminars for graduates.
‘Much of the information aims to empower dance professionals, either by revealing what it is like to in different areas of dance, or by providing network, training and work experience,’ Siddall explains. ‘We hope to encourage a greater sense of confidence among dance professionals… Realistically, I suspect it will take more than a couple of years to make a difference to the demographics of the profession. This is our longer term aim, and why it matters that the project makes a difference to Dance UK, so we can carry on the development beyond the end of the project.’
While Sones is excited about the range of work being undertaken by Creative Renewal projects, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. One of the problems encountered has been the delay in funding from the ESF. The first payment, due in May this year, only came through last month – resulting in some organisations having to postpone events by up to six months. Most of the partners had never worked with European funding before, Sones explains, and were therefore, understandably nervous when funds were not immediately forthcoming.
‘It has been slightly frustrating in terms of delays in getting the project going,’ Sones concedes, ‘But we are enormously excited about this project. It’s not easy working with a European funding regime… but we think we have developed a pretty comprehensive programme.’
Sones hopes, ultimately, that the scheme will have a greater impact than similar initiatives in the past, by influencing real change in terms of the way money is spent and policy implemented, supported by robust evidence from a comprehensive body of research.
‘We hope that the weight of all these organisations working together – and this coming from the organisations up rather than the funders down – will create a different sort of pressure, and lead to some coherent and sustained change.’
