Equality and Diversity Action Plan

The Place building is seen from the Duke's Road entrance lit up at night

This Action Plan collates all actions related to equality and diversity from existing corporate strategic documents such as our Access and Participation Plan, Periodic Programme Review, National Partnership Strategy, Commissioning Strategy and our Business Plan.

The Action Plan can be found below and will be updated each quarter with progress notes following reporting to our board of governors.

Here is a summary of the key updates / progress against each equality strand of the action plan (for exhaustive update, please feel free to download our latest Action Plan on this page):

1. Building Boards that lead on equality and diversity

  • The drive and extra resource invested to recruit governors with different lived experiences has been positive and this work continues. At board level global majority representation is 20% (Aug 23).
  • Our partners Creative Access have provided Unconscious Bias training at Governor level. The ambition is to repeat this with new board members.

2. Equality Strand: Recruiting and retaining and a diverse workforce/student body

  • We continue to search for opportunities for funding to support placements for people from ethnically diverse and low socio-economic backgrounds and new traineeships have been built into budgets for 23/24 as a strategic priority.
  • Team Tailor, an applicant tracking system, which has streamlined our recruitment processes improving access. The platform includes a talent pool function (which currently has 190 members), allowing us to contact interested parties directly when jobs are advertised; tracking so we can understand where applicants are applying from; and it is visually superior to the previous downloadable candidate packs.
  • Training, partnerships and reviews have been delivered including Disability Awareness Training by Quiplash for 20 staff; a review of the disabled student journey by Diversity and Ability presented to LCDS SMT; and a new partnership with Wellbeing in the Arts to provide support and training in mental health and wellbeing for staff being developed.
  • A student recruitment strategy has been created and developments now in place include strategic partnerships to attract a wider pool of students; a more inclusive, transparent and fair admissions process, more offsite admissions workshops, and programme information about financial support, student finance, accommodation and mental health support provided at in-person and online open days.

3. Equality Strand: Responding to the Creative Case for Diversity

  • Partnerships have included burlesque and cabaret expert Cleopantha for Artist Led Labs and presentations by Queer East, Breakin' Convention and FRINGE! Queer Art & Film Fest in the Theatre.
  • We hosted five post show talks in the spring season four of which had BSL interpretation.
  • Simone Mousset took part in Aerowaves Start Up Forum, nominated by The Place, aimed at supporting a new generation of curators
  • We partnered with disabled led company Daryl & Co on the Playground Tour, touring a shorter version of their outdoor piece Look Mum No Hands.
  • We confirmed the second R&D period for Little M and the creative team - 100% of them being non-binary or trans.
  • The programming and producing teams worked with Applied Inspiration to understand how to better collect, evaluate & present data like equal opportunities information and project feedback.

4. Equality Strand: Reaching Diverse Audiences

  • Plans for the capital refurbishment of the cafe, changing rooms and dressing rooms are under way, with internal consultations on social space, wayfinding, entrances and inclusivity.
  • the album by SAY and Dance No 2 by Sivan Rubinstein had live audio description at The Place in the Spring 2023 programme, with a touch tour preceding the show.
  • We began a relationship with East Asian Ticket Club on performances in the theatre programme that have been identified as shows with themes of interest to their audiences.
  • We worked with Partner Schools to tour work into schools, present the Partner Schools Festivals in the theatre and provide three after school clubs.
  • The Creative Learning team worked with New Horizon Youth Centre and October Gallery to deliver a monthly Creative Club, pupil referral unit Robson House, and are planning a project with Clean Break Theatre Company.
  • All public webinars and events continue to be captioned or BSL interpreted.
  • Parent and Child classes continue to be programmed, with attendance growing term by term. We have increased the programme to reflect this to 2 x weekly classes from Autumn 2023

Download the latest version of our Action Plan