We’re holding a forum during the festival – Facing Racism in Fringe PR and Comms – which will comprise of three parts. The first two of which are being led by a facilitator with storytelling providing the platform and admin support. The direction of the discussions is being led by Black, Indigenous, Ethically Diverse voices – artists and writers who have been able to opt in / out and make amends and changes to the forums. It is with their insight we have reached this point.
Special thanks to Head of Operations at Rambert, Tigho Feldman, Edinburgh Based Culture Writer, Arusa Qureshi and Dancer/Choreographer/Collaborator Claricia Parinussa for their wisdom and leadership. All contributors will be paid with support from the Festival Fringe Society and Storytelling PR LTD alongside your tickets. A break down of payments and contributions to charity in lieu of fees will be posted on our website.
Prompt: Yale academic and sociologist Monica Bell that ‘avoidance of racism affects people’s life decisions’ so if gaining coverage is going to mean encountering racism, it’s a HUGE barrier – we don’t want Black, Indigenous, Migrant and Ethnically Diverse makers to encounter this – so to start speaking truth to power – let’s talk through the size of these barriers and manifest and then we can go on to challenge the industry – even if person by person – to be better.
A series of forums which hope to create new patterns of behaviour, support for our artists and a deeper understanding of the biases at play – we will provide a reading list to support you doing this work.
We want to create both accountability and a sense of group support to work for change.
Forum 1
1. An artists only forum to discuss situations, problems, circumstances beyond their control, that have arisen and involved racism be that structural or explicit. (could be as simple as ‘no I can’t do interviews on my days off I’m exhausted from managing this environment’ through to ‘I don’t want to be interviewed by white men because of experience of / fear of racist encounters’) This will be a closed forum. This will be led by a facilitator and Storytelling will not be attending.
Industry invite: September 1 Tuesday 3pm zoom
2. We will summarise the above (with the participants permission) to lead a second, outward facing forum for the industry (PR, Comms teams, Journalists) – the role of making change (for our industry) does not lie with artists – but their contribution is the only way we can honestly face the huge problems we have to look to change. We say this with huge awareness that diversifying and changing structures within the industry has to happen. This will be lead by Tigho Feldman as facilitator and contributors and contributions from the closed forum.
September 1 Tuesday 4.30pm zoom
3. A ‘white fragility forum’, without any of our artists to deal with questions, shame, defensiveness that has come up from being told how it is – this will be with everyone from session two – our industry. We appreciate as those who have been conditioned within structures that are held up by White Supremacy and anti-black, migrant, indigenous viewpoints – this is a journey for us all that has to start somewhere, and working with Black, Indigenous, Migrant talent doesn’t change how it is – so how do we start to make change through our work? How do we try, fail and fail better as an industry. A safe space for PRs and Media to share their experiences and find support systems. This will be lead by Mim A & Mim B from Storytelling PR.
Ends 5.30pm – break out group welcome until 6pm.
We will charge £10 for attending so we can pay all our contributors. If you’d like to pay more we’d welcome that: paypal.me/storytellingpr
We will publish a (broad strokes) breakdown of funding / payments to artists / activist donations on Storytellingpr.com.
Storytelling will not make a profit or take a fee for our time.
Please register your interest here!
Miriam X
