News/July 2020

I hope and expect that many of my recommendations will benefit White working class men, women, boys and girls too. BAME communities face specific challenges, including discrimination in many walks of life. But some of the most marginalised BAME communities have much in common with the White working-class. A justice system that works better for those who are BAME and poor will work better for those who are White British and poor too. “   

 

The Lammy Review, 2017

 

In response to the Black Lives Matter movement we have reviewed our work on racism and inequality, and agreed upon three immediate actions we will take to improve our own practices, and the impact we can have on the experiences of everyone we interact with.

The three actions listed below are just the first steps we will take and we will be transparent about what we are doing in the future. Our goal with these three actions is to be practical, specific and nuanced.

To inform these actions, we have followed the discussion online, read key texts, listened to podcasts and discussed among ourselves as we have sought to reflect and to learn. We asked for input from our email list and followed up in email exchanges and a phone call to understand the response we received.

We recognise the argument that Black is a specific identity that should be addressed on its own terms and that Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) is a blunt term. Others use BAME as a term to acknowledge the interlocking experiences of racism experienced by all non-white people. The terms People of Colour (POC) and Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) also collect extraordinarily diverse groups of people from many cultural backgrounds into a single framework. For now, we will follow national and international discussions about terminology and continue to use the term BAME while being aware of its limitations.

 

 

Blast Theory’s immediate actions

 

  1. Compulsory unconscious bias training for all staff

All staff, current and new, will undertake unconscious bias training. All staff will also attend a follow up session where we will agree concrete steps as to how we will address the unconscious biases that we all hold, and we will actively monitor the implementation of these actions. This will become a default part of the process for anyone joining Blast Theory.

 

  1. Publish our Equality Action Plan

Our Equality Action Plan will be available on our website, in full, by 31st July and shall remain public. The plan and its subsequent revisions will always be publicly available for scrutiny and comment. It will outline how we will make impact within the company’s practices and culture; through our work and its research; and through our collaborators and their working practices. That plan includes Success Criteria and we will be transparent about our progress towards those goals. Click here to view the plan (opens as a PDF).

 

  1. Give bespoke feedback to all BAME applicants to any job

We welcome BAME applicants for all jobs at Blast Theory and make that explicit with any job that we advertise. Up until now, we have sought to write our application packs without jargon, made efforts to target specific groups, and anonymously monitored the ethnicity of applicants to ensure we are reaching a wide range of applicants. We review this anonymous data after each new recruitment to assess how we can do better. We do not generally give feedback to applicants who are not invited to interview.

From now on, we will offer all applicants that identify themselves as BAME and/or as being from lower socio-economic groups personal feedback. This includes actors, paid interns and freelancers. We will work with them to identify areas of development, as well as resources to help them. Where we have the resources or the knowledge to help directly, we will do so.

 

As always, we welcome your feedback and constructive criticism to help us improve. Please email matt@blasttheory.co.uk to get in touch.