participation

AW members have agreed to the following commitments and asks, created by the Seed Team:

BASELINE COMMITMENTS

Language is limited. We will reevaluate. There will be a robust ask for feedback and to re-evaluate.

BE PRESENT

  • Regular Attendance of Meetings in both AW and Action Space (formerly Learning Space).
  • Barring that, proactive communication with AW and Homerooms in advance if unable to attend a meeting. Please email the seed team as soon as you know you won’t be able to attend.

BE PREPARED

  • Come prepared to share action steps that express how the institution and the individual are responding to community concerns and demands (WSY statement and demands, Living Doc and BIPOC demands, survey results, etc.)
  • Share updates on how you and your organization are implementing actual policies, systems, structures that are anti-racist.
  • Share resources and examples, failures, and past/current growth opportunities.

DO SHIT

  • Engage with and complete (as applicable) action items/asks
  • Bring your own topics of discussion or struggles to the group (for example, Playground’s apology case study; Shotgun’s survey, apology, and org response; Making Good Trouble program) 
  • Engage respectfully in conversation with one another and respect the boundaries we set for group discussions. 
    • Community Guidelines:
      • Speak from your own experience, use “I” statements.
      • Share the air.
      • Two lenses – Self and Group
      • Self-care / Community care (note: “right to pass”; “intent and impact”)
  • Include multiple (more than 1) AW participants from your organization to ensure accountability across the organization, especially for larger organizations with siloed and/or autonomously operating departments.  
  • Be willing to take risks in service of change
  • Demonstrate changed behavior in support of marginalized individuals in our industry 
  • Support the accountability of the full workgroup and your own personal responsibility in this work in recognition of our industry-wide interdependence. 

BE TRANSPARENT

  • Remember that this work is in service of reducing harm across our whole industry, not just within your organization and not just for its public reputation.
  • If you’re going to use language in your grant related to the work of the AW, please check in with the Seed Team. 
  • Cultivate a spirit of invitation around your accountability journey for people in your organization who are not able to be a part of the group, as well as members of the larger theater community. Share openly and honestly about your past failures, your learnings, changed behaviors, new policies/practices.

Six months into our work, members were asked to recommit to the efforts of the AW through a series of asks.

FOUR ASKS 

  1. Support the participation of a BIPOC staff member from your organization joining the BIPOC Centered Space. This includes compensation for their participation in the Space (either on top of their position, or included as part of their duties in a way that is sustainable for the staff member).
    1. Inviting at least 2 people from each organization
  1. Participate in supporting/funding the work of the Accountability Workgroup:
    1. Fiscal Funding (either direct (% of salary) or indirect (fundraising))
    2. Rendered Services
      1. Guest Speakers
      2. BIPOC Centered Space
    3. Advocacy
  2. Participate in ongoing publicly-shared demographic survey efforts. We will, in collaboration with professional consultation, develop a set of standards by which this information is collected.
  3. Public posting of (by a specific date?)… 
    1. current goals / future plan
    2. EDI actions over the past year