Context

Beam is a cultural development organisation working across the North of England, their inclusive approach champions, celebrates and engages Artists and communities to shape and animate thriving places.

Beam aims to create a culture that encourages and values diversity, and that appoints, rewards and promotes board members, staff and freelancers based on merit. They are committed to taking positive action to address lack of equity within their working practices and to being an anti-racist organisation.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion are at the heart of Beam’s new business plan (2022-26) and they are working to implement tangible positive change over the next four years.

Informed by observational and monitoring data, Beam recognised that Artist commission opportunities were not attracting enough applications from Artists with protected characteristics or from marginalised communities and therefore there is an urgent need to explore potential barriers and take action to address them.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought inequalities to the fore and increased the need for high quality and truly inclusive public spaces to support our health and wellbeing.

During 2021, Beam was mentored by Inc Arts UK through the Creative England Advance mentoring programme (in partnership with Wakefield Council). This has been influential in exploring Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) issues and creating a roadmap for organisational change. It has also enabled Beam to start defining what the term diversity means to them, which includes all the protected characteristics included in the Equality Act 2010 - age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage or civil partnership status; pregnancy and maternity; race (including ethnic or national origin); religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation; with the addition of social class.

In order to be truly inclusive, it is important that Beam also consider intersectionality and recognise overlapping identities and that everyone has their own unique experiences of marginalisation and oppression.

The report is presented in four parts and includes:

1. Artist Voice and PerspectiveResponses and quotes from the interviews with Artists from a range of practices about their experiences in the sector.

2. Public Art ProducersA summary of the methods, approaches and practices arts organisations and public art producers have used to reach, support and work with a range of diverse Artists to produce public art/ work in the public realm.

3. Engaging with the Wider SectorSector wide equity, diversity and inclusion reports and research.

4. Research Phase ConclusionsSummary of conclusions.