The University of Liverpool is pleased to sign the Liverpool Arts and Culture Race Equality Manifesto . The campaign to drive inclusion and equality in arts and culture across the Liverpool City Region, aims to diversify the sector's workforce, and speak out against racism.
Containing seven pledges, the manifesto has been produced collectively by the members of the Liverpool Arts Regeneration Consortium (LARC) and Creative Organisations of Liverpool (COoL). It has now been signed by 31 arts and cultural organisations from across the Liverpool City Region.
By signing, the University is making a public commitment to work towards the manifesto's pledges across its arts and cultural venues, including its Libraries, Museums and Galleries, and The Tung Auditorium. This reflects its desire to better represent and embed equality, diversity and inclusion across its workforce, collections, venues, and programming.
The Tung Auditorium already has a key objective of achieving diversity both on and offstage in alignment with the manifesto pledges, and colleagues across Libraries, Museums and Galleries are working to diversify both their public and student programming through co-curation and collaboration.
In signing the manifesto on behalf of the University, Professor Fiona Beveridge, Executive Pro-Vice Chancellor for Humanities and Social Sciences said:
'I'm pleased to sign the manifesto on behalf of the University as a reflection of our commitment to embed equality, diversity and inclusion across our arts and cultural activities. It is an important acknowledgment of our desire to become a more diverse organisation and to be a bold advocate for race equality, working with, and learning from, our arts and cultural partners and our neighbouring communities'.
Bryan Biggs, Director of Cultural Legacies at the Bluecoat said on behalf of the Race Equality Action Group that monitors the manifesto:
'We are delighted that the University of Liverpool has signed the manifesto, which provides a set of principles and a plan for actively promoting greater race equality across the cultural sector.
"We welcome this commitment from an institution that contributes significantly through its excellent venues and public programmes to the cultural life of the city, and we will support it in its initiatives towards achieving greater equity across the work of these valuable resources.'
Colleagues will work to deliver on the manifesto's pledges and measure progress against these. The manifesto comes alongside the University's upcoming Race Equality Charter application, further underlining its commitment to support EDI across its teaching, learning and research within its Liverpool 2031 strategy.
