My laptop is filled with powerful statements about equality, anti-racism, equitable and positive action, discrimination, trans rights, and learning/access challenges for 13 different physical and invisible disabilities. I am working through Layla F Saad’s disturbing workbook “Me and White Supremacy” and I have just been given a fascinating dissertation on bisexual young people exploring bi-visibility and bi-erasure. I am learning fast, and I have a lot to learn. I wish to become a ‘good ancestor’ to quote Layla Saad, or at the very least a better one.
This work is all part of preparing the CGO Institute and to ensure that there are some clear policy statements about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) – not just so that we can work in the best possible way with faculty and students, but even more so that we can debate in class what is working, what is not, and how changes in the world may happen through activism and the arts.
Along with everyone else learning about creative producing, I want to learn how to be a better citizen in the future, and to understand what we can all (and must all) do differently. In reflecting on many policies, I am humbled by those who have battled over years and generations to reach where we are today, and the massive amount which still has to happen in my community, our country, and across the world to allow every citizen to be treated equally and better.
We have now had two rounds of interview for the first cohort, and the next date is 5th August. As well as people finding out about the course through twitter and facebook, the British Council or International Theatre Institute and regular theatre associations, I am having fascinating conversations with organisations and individuals who are set up to help young people and diverse communities to move forward in life. Whether it will be in time to make the first applicant base as fully reflective of the uk population diversity I don’t know. My personal ambition is to ensure that by the end of the 3rd cohort we are sending out into the work creative producers who are going to change the world, and will themselves reflect the diversity of that world and the audience they wish to see engaged in the arts.
I am delighted already to know that we have people signed up who are passionate about musical theatre, new playwrighting, working in inner city communities to make change, international commercial work, small scale theatre and festivals. Not a bad range of artistic ambitions to bring together and learn from each other.
If you are reading this and believe that, maybe, creative producing is a possible career pathway for you or someone you know, then you are right. We need more producers – the inventors, employers and facilitators of the future. I have two workshops coming up which will look at all the pathways, including this diploma, to get into the producing business – please help to spread the word;
Mon 20th July 7pm Producing workshop facilitated by CGO Associate Tania Azevedo and Portugal based producer Bruno Galvão (presented in Portugese and English) exploring the industry in Portugal and Brazil and how new producers could study and work to change the landscape. go to Bruno’s page and send him a message
Fri 24th July 3.30pm Producing Proper Job Honest (presented in English only) which will offer a 2hr taster of the tools and rules of producing and how you might make it your career. book here
I am fascinated to meet the next generation of creative changemakers, and to bring them into contact with an international faculty of practitioners who want to make the world a better place using the arts. There is so much to do, and on Nov 2nd 2020 I will start a new chapter in my life with the first cohort on the Diploma – I can’t wait.