Updates on Black Lives Matter Commitments

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Update on Black Lives Matter Commitments 2023

In August 2020 Glasgow Film made a series of commitments in support of Black Lives Matter. These commitments were made to ensure we had concrete actions in place going forward. We updated those commitments and shared our progress in April 2021 and again in 2022.

Since August 2020 we have

• Completed an anti-racism audit in 2021
• 60 temporary and permanent staff completed organisational wide anti-racism training in 2021
•   Ten staff members completed intersectionality in practice training in 2022
•  Designed an in-house session on equalities and anti-racism (supported by consultant Talat Yaqoob) that will be rolled out to all staff, board and volunteers from 2024 onwards.
• Established a staff diversity forum that meets four times a year
• Written and published our anti-racism pledge
•  Invited anti-racism and equalities experts to speak at staff and volunteer quarterly sessions. This will continue into 2024
• Updated our recruitment packs to include our commitments to anti-racism and equalities
• Widened our recruitment reach by developing our networks with community organisations
• Written a new anti-racism and equity strategy
• Continued to further develop and prioritise programming partnerships with Black and Global Majority film programmers
• Continued to further develop our community outreach with local community partners who work with marginalised people from the global majority
•  Continued to develop our Black and Global Majority outreach networks across our Industry, Youth and Education programmes
• Set and achieved diversity targets in our industry activities with new film talent
• We are currently working on a new equalities code of conduct that will be shared with customers, partners and anyone using our venue for private events
• We are currently working on an internal anti-racism and equity toolkit that will set out minimum standards and best practice when planning, delivering, and marketing events

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Update on original Black Lives Matters commitments

Most of our original commitments have been progressed. Some were time specific and have been completed but many are ongoing areas of activity and now form part of our new anti-racism and equity strategy. Key areas where we have seen good steady progress is in programming, training, and staff culture. Recruitment and the diversity of our staff and volunteers is an area where we still want to do much better. 

Recruitment and staff diversity

Actions that we have taken so far are adding information on our anti-racism and equalities commitments to our recruitment packs; reviewing the inclusivity of recruitment processes and making accessibility and inclusion improvements; widening our recruitment reach and networks. We have also held a volunteering open day and developed a new volunteering buddy scheme.

The most recent staff data (which gives a snapshot of a specific time frame) shows that the total percentage of staff who identify as White has decreased and is now lower than 2011 census data for Glasgow. The total number of staff who identify as Mixed Race has increased and is significantly higher than 2011 census data. However, there are other Global Majority groups including Black, South Asian, South East and East Asian people where we have not seen any data change in staff or GFT volunteer teams. We need to better understand our failure to recruit applicants from these backgrounds. Diversity in the Glasgow Film Festival volunteer team has improved with nearly 5% identifying as Chinese and nearly 4% identifying as Asian.

Next Steps: In 2024 we will commission a review of the anonymous equal opportunities data submitted by all job applicants and seek expert external guidance on how to reach more Black and Global Majority applicants.

The diversity of our Board membership:

We will continue efforts to attract applications from as diverse a pool of candidates as possible and maintain diversity within the board group.

Inclusive and anti-racist staff culture:

We have made efforts to ensure that our commitment to inclusion is visible and tangible to all staff, volunteers and customers. To do this we have established our staff diversity forum, updated our website with anti-racism and equalities information, added more information on our work in this area to our recruitment packs, and added anti-racism/inclusion as a rolling agenda point to our quarterly all staff sessions. Senior managers now also discuss our progress on fortnightly basis.

Next Steps: We will continue this work to maintain and further develop our inclusive work culture.

Training

We said that we would ensure that Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion training, including anti-racism training, is offered to all senior staff and a role relevant offer rolled out across the organisation to all current staff and volunteers, and that we would add information on our anti-racism work to our induction process to all new staff and volunteers.

·       Nearly 60 members of the team participated in our anti-racism training and action planning during 2021/2022

·       Anti-racism training has been added to the induction pack for all new FOH staff

·       Bespoke training in applying intersectional thinking to delivery and inclusion work was delivered to permanent staff in programme, marketing and senior management roles during 2022/2023

·       We have now designed an in-house session on equalities and anti-racism (supported by consultant Talat Yaqoob) that will be rolled out to all staff, board and volunteers from 2024 onwards

·       An introduction to our equalities and anti-racism commitments has been added to inductions for all office-based staff

 Next Steps: We will actively maintain anti-racism training offer and ensure active and visible engagement with anti-racist learning and discourse with all staff and volunteers.

 Programme:

The audit process reinforced the need for year-round programming partnerships and investment in longer term outreach with Black and Global Majority communities. We continue to prioritise this area of work. Current partnerships and priorities include

-        Working with Black and Global Majority programmers

-        Developing our programming partnerships with a variety of Black and Global Majority led organisations and groups including We Are Parable

-        Developing outreach activities with key community partners including Central West Integration Network and Garnethill Multi Cultural Centre.

Below is our Staff Demographics from 2022/2023.

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