2021 Diversity & Socioeconomic Impact Report

In July 2020, we promised to create an annual report on the demographic and socioeconomic impact of Bluecoats programs, the diversity of our team, and the progress of our initiatives to advance inclusion and equity within our organization.

This is our second year of building this report—you can view last year’s inaugural report here.

“Reflecting on these data annually allows us a concrete and ongoing opportunity to reflect on our programming and the ways in which we’d like to see it grow in our pursuit to build a more inclusive and equitable culture. As we take steps to advance this culture, sharing this demographic data helps us to create a culture of transparency and, we hope, this report increases people’s understanding of the reasons the steps we are taking are so necessary.”

- Mike Scott, CEO & Genevieve Geisler, CFO/COO

According to the self-reported data in this report, amongst corps participants, students identifying as Black or African American are not represented at a percentage concomitant with U.S. population statistics. Likewise, staff identifying as Asian and/or Black or African American are underrepresented. In both corps participants and staff, women are significantly underrepresented. Lastly, self-reported socioeconomic data indicates that students from lower-income households are underrepresented in comparison to population statistics.

We know from casual observation that people of color are significantly underrepresented in leadership positions within the organization, including Board of Directors, caption heads, design team, and executive leadership. We also know that women, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals are also underrepresented in many of these areas. In 2022, we plan to collect staff demographic data in a way that will allow us to further analyze and break down staff demographics by type of role. The demographic data in this report certainly shows a community that has room for progress.

Following the data in this report, you will find a summary of the current initiatives to advance a more inclusive culture at Bluecoats. These initiatives include the Bluecoats Fellowship, re-organizing our hiring practices, providing free performing arts education to local students in under-resourced communities, and developing scholarship funds. Read them all in the report.