Cultural Inclusion Strategy – Consultation

The vision for The Cultural Inclusion Manifesto CIC is:

 All children and young people with disabilities have equal access to a broad range of artistic and cultural experiences.

Is this the right vision?

To progress this vision The Cultural Inclusion Manifesto will work with partners, leaders of arts and culture organisations, educators, politicians and artists to promote access and drive inclusive practice in the following ways:

•  To Consume – to be audience members in venues, in school and online without barriers to access.
• To Create – to be artists and performers participating in all art forms, accessing progression routes, training, and opportunities to showcase their talents.
• To Connect – to engage with arts and culture through positive depictions of disabled people and identifying with disabled artists as role models.
• To have Careers – to be arts and culture employees, to be amongst the next generation of leaders, and accessing progression routes.

Do these four areas cover the range of experiences?

The Cultural Inclusion Manifesto’s priorities are to:

• Increase awareness of the importance of arts and culture to the health, education and well-being of children and young people with disabilities and its ability to transform their life chances. Engage with key partner organisations and politicians at the local, regional and national level to ensure that inclusion is central to policy.
• Identify barriers to greater inclusion of disabled children and young people in arts and culture and to develop practical solutions in collaboration with others and disseminate them widely to stakeholders.
• Be a repository for information that will help providers of arts and culture to be inclusive and to amplify and share good practice in inclusive arts and culture. Identify, capture and disseminate best practice widely to stakeholders to support organisations to improve their offer to disabled children and young people.
• Encourage and support mentoring and strategic partnerships to increase representation and create more opportunities for disabled children and young people to engage with arts and culture.
• Support organisations to audit their offer and ensure it is accessible for children and young people with disabilities and investigate the value of a kitemark accreditation for arts and culture organisations to meet, and show that they meet, standards for inclusion.

Would achieving these priorities bring about change?

To work towards these priorities our immediate actions will be:

• Continue to promote the Cultural Inclusion Manifesto to gain supporters for its principles.
• Develop and promote framework with standards for organisations to be accessible for children and young people with disabilities.
• Seek funding. Identify prospective funders to support core activities and develop robust and compelling cases for support to inform funding applications.
• Investigate the feasibility of a tiered, paid for, membership of Cultural Inclusion.
• Form a Steering Group and recruit Patrons to support our work and amplify our message.
• Identify prospective mentors across education, arts and culture and recruit them to a new matching service for signatories seeking expertise and support.
• Produce a toolkit for developing local, regional and national cross-sector strategic partnerships.
• Develop a broad range of case studies illustrating innovative work to increase access to arts and culture remotely.
• Increase speaking opportunities at key events and forums (conferences, workshops and meetings of relevant All Party Parliamentary Groups) and identify the best person/people to participate.
• Deliver an annual conference and a range of workshops for signatories and stakeholders on key emerging issues.
• Develop our website further and produce a range of new high-quality content to drive traffic and increase the range of support and tools available to signatories and stakeholders.

Would these immediate actions be effective in working towards the priorities?

We are asking out signatories and supporters to:

• Contribute to this strategy development process.
• Provide expertise and experience to assist with the development of cases for support and the identification of best practice.
• Support the Cultural Inclusion Manifesto’s communications efforts.
• Support the Cultural Inclusion Manifesto’s fundraisings efforts.
• Offer themselves or the people they work with to represent the Cultural Inclusion Manifesto at events and in the media.
• Join Steering Groups and Working Groups to provide expertise to the development of new initiatives.

Are these reasonable asks of signatories and supporters?