If the arts industry needs an overhaul to boost leadership diversity, how do we do it?
I recently read this article in The Stage, headline: ‘Urgent change’: calls for industry overhaul to boost leadership diversity.
As someone who supports a number of arts organisations in becoming more diverse, equitable and inclusive, you might expect me to agree with the sentiments in this article, and I do. But I wanted to add some of my own thoughts to it.
The article says there are ‘vanishing numbers of global majority leaders in cultural organisation’, and points to specific examples. This is the case in this industry, but also across others. In my experience this turn over of people of the global majority is all too common. Reasons that are shared with us are:
Realising they were a tokenistic appointment
Finding that the leadership team around them wasn’t ready to take direction and leadership from a person of the global majority
Finding that the team around them are not able or willing to support them to deal with examples of racism and discrimination from colleagues in more junior positions
Finding that the Board are not in a position to recognise their experience and offer any meaningful support
Finding that any direction to implement changes to become more diverse and inclusive are dismissed.
The above becomes exhausting and those who were energised and excited to take up post and make a difference become disillusioned, burnt out, and leave.
The article suggests that career pipelines are not the same as those for people racialised as white. Libertarians would push back on this, and suggest that it is for those who wish to, to take advantage of opportunities on offer—we are responsible for ourselves. But this continues to fail to take into consideration the starting point and experiences of those who are underrepresented at best, and actively excluded at worst. In our experience, smaller arts organisations seem to be being more collaborative and imaginative about how career pipelines might actually lead to diversification. Just a few of the best examples we have seen include:
Training opportunities provided to freelancers
Targeting underrepresented demographics with specific programmes to attract, engage, develop and retain them
Providing opportunities to develop the ideas of people of the global majority and bring them to life
Working very hard to connect those who are underrepresented with other organisations.
The important part of this element is ensuring that the work isn’t surface level. Indications that opportunities are surface level are:
Any project is short term, and there is no plan to keep in contact with or communicate with participants after the project
Those with targeted identities are kept in siloes
There was no prior planning to ensure that people engaging in the work did not experience microaggressions or other forms of discrimination
Only those with the same or similar underrepresented identity are invited to see the end product therefore reiterating the stereotype that ‘this’ type of people only like ‘this’ type of art from/performer/event etc.
Contributors to the article pointed to people of the global majority being appointed prior to the pandemic and not having the opportunity to develop their leadership and management skills due to lock down. So, what did Boards do to support? What did leaders in other organisations, which claimed to be antiracist, do to reach out and offer support? What pre-work took place to ensure leadership teams and Boards understood that there is additional labour, just being of the global majority? What expectation management was done to ensure the additional pressure of representing all other people of the global majority was understood by everyone in the organisation?
What we see is people of the global majority in those very senior positions leaving, often times like this:
So what did leadership teams and Boards do to ensure that HR and People teams understood the subtlety of racism so they could deal accordingly with vague and often vexatious complaints about people of the global majority in very senior positions? Anecdotally, what we see is that people of the global majority leave and are then replaced with the ‘safe pair of hands’; usually a white male. Proving, in the minds of diversity and inclusion sceptics, that it just doesn’t work.
Networks were suggested as a possible example of best practice in the article. We have no doubt that our anecdotal and empirical evidence shows that networks and consortia can be very effective in sharing good practice and harnessing diverse talent. However, I also think organisations with significant reputation and those who have a historical presence have to engage with these networks and consortia intentionally.
2024 feels like a huge crossroads nationally and globally for lots of reasons, and I agree we have been having the same conversations for years. It seems that continuing to do things the same as they have been before will yield the same results. So, what might that difference look like?
Stop seeing diversification as the end goal, or the thing to achieve
Do much better work to create fertile ground before people of the global majority are leaders, to allow them to grow and thrive. The prework is essential
Stop assuming that diversity is evidence of an absence of racism - it isn’t. Assume it is there and will increase with the appointment of people of the global majority into very senior positions. Think about how we deal with that
Continue with specific career development and talent harnessing projects, but ensure they go somewhere. The project itself is useless without some thought and consideration of what it leads to and how you ensure it happens
Realise that your values, words and policies are meaningless; it is the actions and behaviours which are important, so how do you ensure that the focus moves on to behaviours?
Accept that we probably didn’t do enough with previous antiracism training. Training by itself is valueless, it is the work that happens after the training that holds the value and we’ve been largely seeing learning as the fix but it has been ‘cementing the cracks’ as was suggested in the article
Accept that focusing on learning for the most junior people was a false economy. Swap that around, and if you are going to invest in training or learning, put it where your Board and senior leaders are
Start holding ourselves accountable. It’s been a very long time of declaring antiracism and appointing people of the global majority only for them to leave. Something’s going wrong, and since it is such an endemic problem, the answer probably lies in the behaviours of the majority identities. Difficult to hold, but probably true.