Seven Inclusive Principles for Arts & Cultural Organisations

Theatres Trust is pleased to endorse a new guide that aims to ensure inclusivity is at the heart of the UK's cultural recovery.

Campaigning cultural organisations We Shall Not Be Removed, Ramps on the Moon, Attitude is Everything, Paraorchestra and What Next? have joined together to create a new guide to ensure deaf, neurodiverse and disabled people are not discriminated against as creative work begins again and as venues re-open.

Seven Inclusive Principles for Arts & Cultural Organisations working safely through COVID-19 offers practical guidance to organisations to support disabled artists, audiences, visitors, participants and employees. It complements the suite of guidance documents already issued by UK Governments and sector support organisations.

The Seven Inclusive Principles are:

  1. All organisational activities must comply with the requirements of The Equality Act (2010) and make reasonable adjustments to operating practice that ensure disabled people are not unlawfully  discriminated against
  2. All actions relating to disabled people should be undertaken in accordance with the Social Model of Disability and aim to combat and eliminate ableism
  3. Co-production with disabled people: disabled people should be consulted when organisations develop bespoke operating or re-opening plans, and undertake Equality Impact Assessments before making decisions
  4. Organisations need to provide clear, accurate and comprehensive information about Covid-19 measures to enable disabled artists, practitioners, employees, visitors, audiences and participants to assess their own levels of risk, and be prepared to adapt to specific enquiries or requests
  5. The customer journey for disabled audiences and visitors should be thoroughly mapped, ensuring it is equality impact assessed, clearly communicated in multiple formats to the public, and prioritises free companion tickets to maintain essential access
  6. Disabled artists are an important cultural asset in the UK and their engagement in all new creative projects should be prioritised
  7. Organisations should ensure they celebrate diversity, embed anti-ableist principles to support and protect disabled people, and should demonstrate due care for the disabled workforce when making decisions about redundancy, restructuring and new ways of working

Jon Morgan, Director of Theatres Trust said, “Much work has been done in the theatre sector to make our buildings more accessible. It is vital that the pandemic doesn’t result in a step backwards for accessibility. Theatres Trust fully supports the Inclusive Principles, which will help theatres reopen accessibly and inclusively”.

Download a standard print pdf version of Seven Inclusive Principles for Arts & Cultural Organisations working safely through COVID-19 for more details. 

Large print, audio and easy read versions are available from the We Shall Not be Removed website.

 

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

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