My resistance to emerging social norms like gender fluidity makes me feel old. Attitudes have ingrained over the years and now seem stuck despite logic to the contrary. My kids have no such problem, their young brains adapt quickly. I increasingly feel on the wrong side of the saying: ‘you can’t teach an old dog …
Dear 16 year old Kevin, It saddens me to think of you with the anxiety of any 16 year old trying to find themself, made a thousand times harder because who you are has been shaped by racism. It has become part of you. It runs so deep that you will learn to split your …
Dear Darren / Sir Nicholas, Arts Council England (ACE) has tried everything it can think of to improve diversity. The effort has been immense (this should be acknowledged) but the results, in your own words, have been ‘disappointing’. Your recent calls for the Arts Council to do better on racial inequality going forward are welcome. …
I’m walking down a busy west end street. In front of me a few yards ahead is a man, crouched on his feet, almost in a fetal position on the steps of a church. His right hand is rubbing his head. I intend to walk past, making the conscious decision not to look again, in …
Through social media, people often ask me what they can do about racism. There is no simple answer but certainly, it requires a deeper commitment than spending half an hour scrolling through your timeline on instagram. Racism is centuries old and so ingrained in society that many of us don’t know we are being racist …
To future-proof the creative sector we must root out systemic funding bias against BAME organisations starting with an equitable sharing of the £1.57 billion bailout package.
MeWe360 (‘MeWe’) is a not-for-profit organisation, set up to develop BAME entrepreneurs – and their enterprises – in the arts and creative industries. It was a project motivated by anguish and hope. Anguish, born of my frustration at the underachievement and under-representation of BAME leaders; and hope that, through MeWe, we can help unlock the …
There will be no social media storms about miseducation perpetrated by some teachers on black children and yet these acts have ripple effects on our community over many generations. Equal – and I’d say related– to the brutal violence perpetrated by our criminal justice system.
To some extent, teachers inevitably reflect the breadth of attitudes in society, including those on race. Twenty-five per cent of the general public admit to having racist attitudes. Whilst this will likely be less amongst teachers, it is certain that some will also hold such views. But how many? And what exposure do black children …
It’s now clear that BAME communities are disproportionately dying from Covid-19. It’s a fact that’s disturbing to me and unacceptable to most of us. No one knows exactly why. We do know that health co-morbidities (pre-existing conditions) play a big part and that those conditions are more prevalent in BAME communities. But what drives this …