Impact & Learning

Key learnings

Following their research, McGillivray & McPherson had the following advice for event organisers:

• Try to ensure your objectives for equality, diversity and inclusion are ‘built in with the bricks’, or ‘baked in’ at the earliest stage of planning and delivery. For smaller community or cultural events without significant public funding to do this, the makeup of the organising body, committee or board can set out a set of principles or a manifesto that outlines realistic commitments.
• Try to include dedicated equality, diversity and inclusion resources (staffing, finance and post-event programmes) in budgets at the contractual stage of the event lifecycle to ensure it retains a high-level prioritisation.
• Try to articulate clear objectives, outputs and outcomes for equality, diversity and inclusion at the early stages of planning and update regularly through event delivery and post-event learning.
• Employ or develop agents of change, or champions, in influential roles within the organising committee or equivalent to disrupt, lobby and advocate for the importance of equality, diversity and inclusion.
• There will be tension, uncertainty and fear over how to cope with complex EDI issues that at times might seem impossible to resolve. Ask advice from expert representative organisations and your industry bodies to help navigate through challenging issues.
• Everyone needs to start somewhere and it’s important to make that first step to address EDI issues. You’ll make mistakes but it’s important to reflect, revise and refocus should your event be recurring.
• Festivals and events can’t possibly meet every person’s need, so it is important to take a balanced approach to inclusion to avoid tokenism.