EDI co-learning network: Some highlights so far
Blog from Kathryn Welch, Culture Counts’ Director - Networks, projects and partnerships
At the beginning of this year, working in partnership with Equal Media and Culture Centre, Culture Counts commissioned six diverse artists to respond to the theme of “dreaming of a fairer future for culture”. We launched these commissions at our core members’ meeting in March, after which we were keen to create space to invite more people and organisations into the conversation. Over the summer (in June, July and August), we hosted three online EDI co-learning sessions, wrapping up with a public event at the Scottish Parliament as part of the Festival of Politics. At each of these events, we used one of our artist commissions as a starting point for discussion, going on to share experiences, reflect on challenges, and think ambitiously about the conditions that enable or hinder fairer participation in the cultural sector.
Looking back, across the past three months of events, I’m struck by the depth, range and vulnerability of these conversations. Some people attended every session, others dropped in here and there. Some shared very personal experiences or reflections, others offered more structural or organisational insights. And we often found ourselves entangled amongst the personal and the political, the hopeful and the frustrating.
Rather, then, than trying to summarise these events into a handful of pithy bullet points, I’m sharing here a handful of key moments that stood out to me. Each is a very particular and partial moment, but together perhaps offer an insight into the conversations and learning. These sessions were held under the Chatham House rule, so the reflections below are shared without credit to any of the individual contributors. I'd like to thank all our attendees, guest speakers, partners and commissioned artists for being part of these discussions.
Working with our mistakes, repairing and adapting as we go.
We are imperfect beings working within imperfect systems; perfection is both unlikely and unhelpful as an aspiration. More useful is a commitment to an ongoing journey, to making a start (or taking a next step) and working with honesty, integrity and transparency. Mistakes happen! Alberta Whittle’s watercolour commission We Are Our Hope has an imperfection visible within the letter P; this is a reminder to work with our mistakes, to recognise that we learn as we go, and to strive toward fairness as a constant work in progress.
Finding collectivity without erasing or minimising difference.
The sector has a collective, UNharmonious voice. There is power in finding ways for us to work with that difference, find commonalities, and embrace those at different stages of a journey – whilst also finding and holding our own ‘red lines’. Beyond the sector, we work with a diversity of communities and a diversity of aspirations for the future (one of our speakers called this ‘the big WE’). These delicate relationships are enabled by time and trust, which in turn is only possible if we aren’t all overstretched and under-resourced. There is power in collective advocacy; competition is the antithesis of mutuality, and advocacy for the sector as a whole needs to be rooted in a unifying theme that everyone can get behind.
The role of rest, care, joy and hope, and of creativity
We acknowledged that change is often driven by individuals, that the sector relies on those who bring diverse personal and lived experiences to their work. This can create uneven burdens on individuals that lead to burnout or trauma, disproportionately experienced by Black creatives and artists of colour, disabled practitioners and those with marginalised genders, neurodivergence or caring responsibilities. We explored practical-but-meaningful actions that organisations can take to support staff (such as 4 day working weeks or menopause leave), and to create structures that embed care for people in a range of roles. We recognised that finding space for rest (building on Miwa Nagato-Apthorp's lyric “May you be loved and left alone”), joy and hope are vital in sustained activism, and that artistic and creative initiatives have a unique ability to touch hearts and influence change.
If you attended one or more of these sessions, we’d like to invite you to share your key moment or highlight, which we’ll add to this list as a growing resource. If you have a reflection to share, please email those to kathryn@culturecounts.scot.
As the final phase of this project, we’re working with Equal Media and Culture Centre, as well as We Are Here Scotland and Creative Balance, to define a series of actions to advocate and help realise a fairer future – for Scotland, for the culture sector, and for everyone. More information on this will follow in the autumn.