Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Council Meets To Set Goals
BLUECOATS’ NEW ADVISORY COUNCIL APPOINTED A PARTICIPANT LIAISON & IDENTIFIED FOUR ACTION STEPS
Last month we announced the formation of the Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Council at Bluecoats. This council’s first purpose is to ensure that Black voices within our community are engaged as we advance an anti-racist culture within our community.
Asst. Drum Major David Davenport at a 2019 rehearsal
The newly formed advisory council had its first meeting last week. The productive discussion covered a wide range of topics including appointing its first participant liaison, discussing how best to curate conversations within the Bluecoats Community about race, and assembling a list of action steps Bluecoats will take immediately toward our goal of creating a better Bluecoats.
We’re proud to announce the appointment of Assistant Drum Major David Davenport as the council’s first participant liaison. David will meet regularly with the council to represent our students and facilitate engagement with our most important constituency as we look to the future.
ACTION STEPS TOWARD A BETTER BLUECOATS
Without our usual summer drum corps programming to focus on, now is the time for Bluecoats to take swift action and ensure that, even without the drum corps on the field, our values continue to make an impact. To that end, we would like to share these four action steps that we will begin work on today.
We will compile and publish an annual diversity and socio-economic impact report to create accountability, illustrate our progress, and highlight where we still have work to do.
We will overhaul our scholarship program, including redirecting funding toward opening gateways at some formidable barriers to entry in the drum corps activity: auditioning, travel, and skill development.
We will create a new outreach program to focus on reducing the barriers to entry to our programming. This includes engagement and recruitment within the HBCU community, providing free and/or reduced student tickets to our performances for students who would not otherwise attend, and increasing participation for students of color at our educational events.
We will build and publish a five-year Action Plan for making Bluecoats a more Diverse, Inclusive, and Anti-Racist organization.
ANNUAL DIVERSITY & SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACT REPORT
The goal of this report will be to illustrate the diversity (or lack of diversity) within our student, program staff, and employee populations. Over time, these reports can demonstrate where we are making progress, and highlight where we still have work to do. As we improve our hiring processes, this report will guide us towards a more diverse staff including operational, medical, educational, and other teams. Ultimately, our mission compels us to provide life-changing performing arts experiences to young people, and our values compel us to bring that mission to ALL students.
SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMMING
Currently, Bluecoats offers a wide variety of scholarships, including a scholarship for Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCU) students. However, we have arrived at the conclusion that a scholarship program that primarily focuses on making a summer of drum corps more affordable does not address the entire challenge.
We aim to redesign our scholarship program to address barriers to entry at what we call the “gateways” to the drum corps activity. Students who cannot afford to attend an audition or educational camp, who cannot pay for the travel to reach an event, or who simply do not have access to drum corps skill development resources will not find a tour fee scholarship helpful. We hope this work will re-engineer our scholarships so that more students have access to these gateway opportunities that create a pathway to success in drum corps, as well as participation in drum corps itself. Any serious work on scholarships must also include a renewed community effort towards funding, and the creation of an endowment to ensure the long-lasting availability of the opportunities they afford.
NEW OUTREACH PROGRAM
We feel "gateways” to the drum corps activity are an important touch point when trying to ensure Bluecoats programming and the drum corps experience reaches a more diverse group of young people. The outreach program we develop will both increase the number of gateways by going directly to students who may not ordinarily interact with Bluecoats, and facilitate access for a more diverse range of students to participate in existing gateways.
We can improve access and pathways by having an informational and recruitment presence at events like the Honda Battle of the Bands, and other HBCU performing arts events. Our presence at these events can highlight opportunities and the ways in which we’re working towards making our programming more accessible through scholarships, mentorship, and skill development opportunities.
Furthermore, we can ensure that existing gateways are more accessible in a variety of ways. We will research how best to supply free and/or reduced price tickets to our performances, and provide students of color and other underrepresented communities access to those tickets. In addition to tickets to shows, we are committed to including more underrepresented students in our educational events and clinics through scholarships, discounts, and the positioning of events in a diverse range of communities.
A FIVE-YEAR PLAN
Implementing these three action steps will not be a quick or easy undertaking, and our overarching goal of creating a more diverse and anti-racist community must be accomplished alongside our many other program development, fundraising, and safety initiatives. As such, we pledge to develop a more thorough and comprehensive plan that will outline our strategy for achieving this goal.
The Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Council will adopt a strategic plan-like approach to creating a document that will outline this five-year action plan. As with our strategic plan, we are confident that this document will provide the guideposts we need to make lasting improvements at Bluecoats and further define our values as they relate to our mission.
Ultimately, these action steps and the work of our Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Council are all derived from our mission to bring life-changing performing arts experiences to young people. We are not accomplishing that mission if the young people we reach do not adequately represent a diverse cohort of young people from a wide array of backgrounds. There will always be progress to be made, but Bluecoats is committed to making diversity and inclusion a special focus, and we look forward to working with the entire Bluecoats Community as we take these first steps.
