Our ambition, as set out in our purpose, vision and values, states our commitment to a future in which everyone can participate and unite to resolve the challenges of our time.
In August 2020 we published an update on our concrete commitments, citing the work we are actively undertaking as an anti-racist organisation and in support of wider diversity, equity and inclusion.
An update on the status of each commitment is below:
Urgently address the lack of racial diversity in our governance and representative structures, including our Trustee Board and Fellowship Council, to ensure that it truly reflects the communities we collaborate with.
At the point of our last update, we were in the process of recruiting for a Trustee role and for new members to serve on our Fellowship Council. We worked with BAME Recruitment, who assisted us in the process where we specifically encouraged applications from those who identified as being from a BAME background. Successful appointments were made.
We will continue to work to ensure our Trustee Board and Fellowship Council remains diverse, and consists of a broad range of skills, experience and backgrounds, while ensuring we are inclusive and equitable in how we recruit and support Trustees and Fellowship Councillors through the work they engage in.
Use specialist recruitment agencies to help us work towards recruiting a senior leadership team that truly reflects the communities we engage with.
For the past few months, we have worked with recruitment specialists and through internal networks to ensure our campaigns contain more inclusive wording and content, in an effort to broaden our reach to reflect the world we live in. We will continue this process for all of our senior core leadership roles as they become vacant.
Ensure diversity of speakers and audience at our events.
Our events team continue to monitor and record the proportion of diverse contributors (considering ethnicity, gender and disability) who participate in our annual public events programme and will seek to ensure representative balance is sought across all of our public platforms.
Establish a representative advisory group that centres Black and minority ethnic experiences to assess and challenge the Board and the Executive team(s) to further their progress.
The foundations for establishing a representative advisory group, with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, continues in line with internal workstreams that are co-dependent. The developments will be shared once completed.
Honestly and openly explore our history and relationship to colonialism and slavery and recognise the responsibilities of the RSA today and in the future.
We have commissioned a review of the RSA’s historical connections to the slave trade and colonialism in the context of the time. We are also exploring how to host wider conversations around these findings once they are concluded. We will update on this in the coming months.
In addition to the above, a diversity and inclusion stocktake has been completed by held, a collective of consultants, educators and practitioners: Vanessa Faloye, Priya Ghai and Alex Lyons. The purpose of the stocktake was to explore what might be hindering our progress towards increased diversity and inclusion.
The stocktake is in the process of being shared internally. The senior leadership team, the DE&I employee representative group, held collective and others will work together over the next few months to cement the findings and ensure strong foundations are set to embed inclusivity.
We will share an update on how the findings and resulting actions are integrated into our key performance indictors in due course.