Inclusion
Hull Truck Theatre is committed to creating a safe and welcoming space for all our communities to enjoy and feel valued.
A key strategic objective for our theatre is to:
Achieve a diversity of audiences, artists, workforce and board members that reflects our region and our nation
One of the mechanisms for change by which we do this, is through the work of our inclusion action group - a cross departmental team of staff dedicated to examining and actioning change and seeing the world through a different lens. It does this by listening to voices that are different to our own so that we can learn what barriers and structures may be excluding those who wish to be part of our creative community.
The group devised and produced the following animation film that creatively expresses our commitment to embedding diversity and inclusion throughout our organisation:
Initiatives the theatre and this group have led include:
- Participating in the Arts Council England’s Change Makers programme - a targeted senior leadership training and development programme to increase the diversity of senior leadership in art and culture. Working collaboratively with Artistic Associate Amanda Huxtable, we curated a senior leadership opportunity which provided Amanda the space and tools to grow her leadership style contributing to her taking up the position of CEO of Eclipse Theatre Company. Alongside this as an organisation, we listened and learned, changing fundamental parts of how our organisation operates to unmask unconscious bias and change it: Read Amanda's blog here.
- Investment in growing board opportunities through working with Inclusive Boards and Artistic Directors of the Future to widen the voices on our board so it better represents the communities we serve.
- Programmes of work specifically targeted at opening up industry careers to those currently under-represented. This included: a technical training programme, offering paid opportunities for those taking part: https://www.stagesight.org/case-studies/technical-skills-training-programme/; off-stage choices career days; apprenticeship and intern programmes.
- Creative partnership with Eclipse Theatre on their Revolution Mix and Slate programme
- Funding an Enabler to support Black Artists to access a range of opportunities and co-producing Chinonyerem Odimba’s Princess and The Hustler
- Partnership with the Market Theatre Johannesburg to celebrate important international black stories on our stage: Watch the suitcase trailer here.
- Partnership with Sphinx Theatre’s Sphinx 30 to increase the diversity of women’s voices on our stages
- Partnership with Graeae Theatre to increase opportunities for d/deaf and disabled artists in our industry - https://graeae.org/new-writing/write-to-play/
- We are a Disability Confident Employer working to improve the recruitment, retention and development of disabled people.
- We are a key partner with Stage Sight and PIPA
- We’ve added access information to our seating plans and enabled access tickets to be booked online
- Changed our recruitment procedures, including advertising, how job descriptions are written and how we ensure barriers are broken down and Banned the Box removing the tick-box from job application forms that asks people to state whether they have any criminal convictions.
- Re-invigorated the way we approach casting and ensure dignity and safety at work, ensuring Black, Asian and Ethnically diverse artists are regularly programmed as part of our visiting programme
- Undertook training and brought people into the organisation to challenge our unconscious bias
The following tables outlines our workforce data for 18-19 (19-20 will be released when the data has been collated). Whilst we remain proud of the commitment to change thus far, our progress in the diversity of our core team is slow and we will be doing further targeted work in order to build on this each year.
Hull Truck Theatre is signed up and committed to UK Theatre's 10 Principles for Safe and Inclusive Workspaces.