Organised by Spektrix
Whatever your organisation or artform, and wherever you are on your personal or professional journey, this session gives you the inspiration and advice you need to activate change. Learn how over 100 Opera companies have embarked on a shared approach to provide industry-wide accountability and shine a spotlight on improvements across the cultural sector, and consider how you and your organisation can gain focus, ground your current practice, and benefit from learnings applicable to the entire cultural sector.
Practical, actionable content is presented as a playbook for change, relevant to organisations of all sizes, types and artforms and to allies at every stage of their career. With robust Q&A time, space for follow up conversations, and a full report to follow later this summer, make this session your next - or first - step towards truer equity, inclusion and racial justice.
The Black Opera Alliance (BOA) was founded in the midst of the pandemic and the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement, yet its roots lie in a much longer history of inequity that’s as relevant to the arts sector in the UK and Ireland as it is in the United States. Its mission is to expose racial inequity and under-representation of the African diaspora in all facets of the Opera sector and to promote reform, and to achieve this, BOA and arts management consultancy TRG Arts have partnered to track the progress that Opera companies are making towards BOA’s ‘Pledge for Racial Equity and Systemic Change in Opera’. In this session, Leadership Council members and Black Opera professionals Pamela Jones and Garrett McQueen will map out the origins of the Alliance, its aims for change, initial findings from its work with TRG Arts, and how it has enhanced the field.