Anti-Racism Update
24 March 2021
In a statement that we shared on 9 June 2020 about our commitment to anti-racism at The Box, we undertook to communicate the ways in which we would make meaningful change in the fight against racism, through our galleries, exhibitions, events, learning offer, internal and external communications and other areas across the organisation. We’d like to take this opportunity to let you know what we’ve been doing since that time.
In June 2020 we set up a taskforce made up of staff from all areas of The Box to examine what we needed to do. The taskforce meets regularly and is working to ensure that meaningful change can happen through research, action and understanding and learning from best practice.
We’ve commissioned local organisation Beyond Face, to develop an anti-racism training course which will be piloted with staff this spring.
We’ve been actively reviewing all the text in our galleries to ensure it tells the whole story, in particular those stories related to Empire and the slave trade.
We’re also exploring how we can ensure that our collections and galleries are representative of all of our communities and are updating and reviewing our policies in line with this.
We’re actively planning our exhibitions, learning and engagement programmes to ensure they represent and engage all our communities, with major exhibitions by black artists set to take place in the near future.
We’re also reviewing and updating our Equality and Diversity Action Plan to ensure that it’s fit for purpose and is rooted in good practice.
We have actively recruited new members to our Shadow Board to ensure that it’s made up of a diverse range of voices, backgrounds and skills.
We are exploring ways in which we can ensure that our future workforce is representative of the communities that make up our city and beyond.
We are aware that we are on an ever-evolving journey in the fight against racism and we are very much at the start of it. We are committed to ensuring we continue this evolution and will let you know how we are doing that at regular intervals.
Racism is never acceptable.