This update relates to our previous statement and our commitment to better inclusion and race equity. We recognise the importance of providing regular updates on the work that is taking place in our race equity working groups and in our departments.
The Ways In working groups are now set up and are meeting regularly. The groups are made up of RA staff, Royal Academicians and RA Schools students and cover programme, experience and careers at the RA. The group priorities and activities are noted in the forthcoming sections and woven into the Programme and Training priorities. The three groups have each met three to six times in the past year and their areas of focus and priority have helped to inform work taking place across all pillars and departments.
Programme
Over the past year we have presented two important exhibitions that signal our ambition to broaden the exhibitions programme to reflect the diversity of art practices, both past and present.
Yinka Shonibare’s 2021 Summer Exhibition has been brought together under his theme of ‘Reclaiming Magic’. In celebration of the joy of creating art, the exhibition sought to transcend a Western art history perspective to focus on the transformative powers of the magical in art, and a return to the visceral, joyful aspects of art-making. Invited artists this year included leading post war and contemporary figures such as Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Ellen Gallagher, Rita Keegan, Magdalene Odundo, Faith Ringgold and Betye Saar among many others. Some of the community partners selected for the exhibition have worked with the Learning team for over eight years. Our social media team worked with Yinka Shonibare and Studio to celebrate works in the exhibition as part of Black History Month.
The exhibition, Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict, held May to September 2021, marked the return of a RA Schools alumnus 10 years after his graduation, now a forceful and confident presence in the art world internationally. The exhibition brought together large-scale paintings from the past six years, exploring East African landscapes, politics and society. A central element of the show was Armitage’s selection of 31 works by six East African contemporary artists: Meek Gichugu, Jak Katarikawe, Theresa Musoke, Asaph Ng’ethe Macua, Elimo Njau and Sane Wadu, invited by Armitage for their important role in shaping figurative painting in Kenya. Artworks by three Kenyan sculptors – Wangechi Mutu, Magdalene Odundo and Chelenge van Rampelberg were placed in the Sackler Sculpture Display outside the exhibition. This intervention invited conversations between the three artists’ works and sculptures from our collection.
Forming part of our Architecture programme: Architecture and Inequity, organised in conjunction with the London Festival of Architecture, was a one-day Zoom webinar which, among other topics, explored the role of architecture in embedding exploitative or colonial practices as well as strategies of resistance.
Two research projects have been underway in the Collections department. The histories and colonial associations of all Royal Academicians and their immediate families from 1768 to1850 have been fully researched and documented. Curators have been working to consider how best to make this research freely available. Enquiries about the research should be addressed to library@royalacademy.org.uk in the first instance though we hope to have the documents available for download in due course. Collections have also worked with the social media team to foreground works by or about notable black figures in history and the contemporary art world. The RA Magazine has increased both its writing about artists of colour and commissioning of writers, illustrators and photographers of colour.
Led by an external consultant, the Collections department has also been considering our documentation and information management processes to ensure that we are more aware of the way we describe and catalogue objects in the RA Collection. We will share the report in the coming months.
Across all our Learning & Collections programmes, both onsite and online, we have ensured that race equity and inclusion is embedded in the selection of works, speakers, artists and artist educators. The groups of young people we work with, onsite and online, represent a wide range of backgrounds. We want the expert speakers and artists that support the Learning and Academic programmes to reflect these backgrounds.. We are currently also looking at how best to track and monitor this when we do not, at the moment, ask participants or workshop leaders to complete any kind of survey or anonymous questionnaire.
Many of these discussions and much advocacy comes from the staff, the Senior Leadership Team and the Ways In Programme working group, whose regular meetings and participants galvanise and challenge at all levels.
RA Schools
In the Autumn 2021 recruitment drive, RA Schools is working to widen outreach to prospective candidates to encourage applications from an increasingly diverse applicant base. Our RA Schools team is developing a database of organisations that currently focus on supporting Black artists and artists of colour – like INIVA, Autograph and not/nowhere – to work with to encourage applications from their networks. We have introduced the Jerwood Foundation monitoring form which will gather more specific data about the protected characteristics of our applicants . We are also considering whether this form might be used in other departments across the RA.
Seminars took place addressing the current climate of race politics and Black Lives Matter, discussing representation of race violence on TV and debating optical activism and what it means to make tokenistic statements on equality rather than engaging in structural change. Lectures focused on the work of Black artists and the history of post-colonialism. Year one students established a Race Equity Reading Group.
The programme of visiting lecturers for the coming year has been put together with a focus on greater representation of people of colour across lectures, talks and tutorials.
Autumn Term Seminars will look at a few specific texts related to three topics; Decolonisation, Auto - Ethnography, and New Materialisms. We will also offer tutorials for students who feel that they have experienced racism and microaggressions and who feel that they would benefit from a safe crit space for their work or writing.
Training and Ways of Working
Over the past year, two senior leaders who have been coordinating the race equity work attended four meetings of the Royal Academy’s Council, one General Assembly, three Royal Academy Trust meetings, multiple Corporate Advisory Group meetings and individual meetings.
Race Equity and Inclusion was on the standing agenda monthly for Senior Leadership meetings, and across several Committees including Audit, Remuneration, Exhibitions, Collections, Learning, RA Schools and RA Magazine Board.
Senior Leaders attended training and leadership sessions, (Clore Leadership Brilliant Routes and Camden Arts Centre), and, through the Ways In Programme working group, we also invited Abid Hussain, Director of Diversity at the Arts Council England to talk about his work and advice on target setting.
Sessions continued, this time one-to-one, with mentor Charlene Prempeh (A Vibe Called Tech), who is also now working closely with our Development and Business Innovation pillar to diversify our business development methods and business leads, and expand our creative business networks.
The Ways Into Careers Working Group launched the Inclusive Recruitment Workshop, run by Creative & Cultural Skills. This charitable organisation aims to create a fair and skilled cultural sector by shaping skills, education and employment best practice. Seventeen managers attended, and the session was so helpful that we are rolling it out a second time. In addition to this there has been a further session for the Ways Into Careers Working Group and senior leaders: Introducing a Workforce Recruitment Plan.
This working group has clearly identified their priorities for the next phase as: staff education and awareness, inclusive recruitment practices and building and consolidating an external network for sharing ideas.
In terms of wider staff training, we are now working with Cerulean Training. Cerulean will run Unconscious Bias training for the RA Schools in October 2021 with a broader roll-out to all RA staff in the coming months.
The Ways Into Experience working group have outlined their manifesto for ensuring equity, inclusion and diversity is foregrounded in for our front of house colleagues. This training ensures that our welcome extends to all our visitors through the language and imagery that we present, and the way we address visitor concerns. We have also reviewed our policy for managing challenging visitor behaviour.
Our Anti-Racism Reading Group is hosted by staff for staff. The group currently has 21 members from across the RA and session numbers vary between 10 to 15 participants each month. The reading group is a space to learn about or discuss topics such as institutional racism, colonisation and privilege. Black authors and authors of colour were prioritised in the programming of the first year of the reading group and the authors or speakers the group studied included Gary Younge, June Sarpong, Akala, Ijeoma Oluo, Emma Dabiri, James Wong, Subhadra Das, Miranda Lowe and Lonnie Bunch.
Our Head of Procurement is currently working to review how we might incorporate equity, inclusion and diversity more meaningfully into our tender process. In the RA shops we have launched a new partnership with Into Art, designed as an ongoing relationship featuring a series of artists in coming seasons. Inspired by the Summer Exhibition, the relationship will continue beyond the timeline of this show.
Next steps: Data and Target-Setting
We are currently developing appropriate materials to collect detailed data from across the organisation. This is required as a basis for setting ambitious targets across the Royal Academy. We continue to work on the improvements, challenges, and necessary actions and targets and we will update this statement with accurate data, agreed targets and appropriate timelines for their achievement.
On 2 June 2020 the Royal Academy made a statement on social media pledging to do better as an institution committed to inclusion and racial equity.
As an organisation our Academicians historically have been selected from the most successful (predominantly male) practising artists of their day. Our Collection and our history are therefore overwhelmingly of their time and place. We recognise that equity and inclusion has not been clearly articulated as a strategic priority for the organisation since that time, and as a consequence it is insufficiently central to decision making across the organisation. This has an impact on our Academicians, staff, students and stakeholders, our programme, our interrogation of our Collection and our welcome to visitors. We are committed to changing this.
In June, the RA Senior Leadership team nominated two senior leaders and a Royal Academician to co-ordinate the work we are committed to doing to become an anti-racist organisation, to recognise and challenge white privilege and to ensure that we remain accountable at all levels of the organisation.
Consultation and conversations
Over the past months, we have been thinking about how to engage most meaningfully on how to challenge race inequalities at the Royal Academy, beginning by consulting key stakeholders across the organisation and by educating ourselves more and better about the most effective and equitable ways of creating and sustaining change.
We held initial meetings in July with the Chair of the Royal Academy Trust, and with our Corporate Advisory Group and subsequently with individual members of the group. We also spoke with Royal Academicians who chair and sit on our Committees. We went to the Royal Academy Council to give an overview of the timeframe and plans and to hear input and ideas as well.
The President, Rebecca Salter PRA, and the Keeper, Cathie Pilkington RA, spoke in September with all Royal Academicians at the General Assembly and again invited further feedback and participation.
We engaged with all Staff and RA Schools Students in dedicated and interactive Zoom meetings (and where possible in-person) and have incorporated the feedback and the many email communications into the next steps. We consulted with staff and students about the formation and resourcing of affinity groups (as requested or desired).
Training and expert advisory
We attended several training and sector-focused meetings across the UK and USA and worked with an external consultant, Charlene Prempeh, CEO and Founder of A Vibe Called Tech, to define not only what we wanted to do but how best to ensure that our meetings and our discussions would translate into meaningful and measurable actions.
Among the most helpful training sessions were those provided by the Clore Leadership Brilliant Routes programme, the Association of Art Museum Curators, and resources provided on the Shades of Noir website, in addition to our own personal reading and resource-sharing.
Assessment and data
This first phase of our work was a phase of consultation and review which ended by asking every Royal Academy department and the Royal Academy Schools to review where they are at this moment. We chose to use the internationally recognised, Museum As Site for Social Action (MASS) action tool kit as the most appropriate method for our organisation. This was the first step for us to be able to gather some data and provide a baseline for our own improvement and accountability.
The MASS action readiness assessment asks a series of questions about race equity and inclusion in the workplace. The assessment divides into six sections where staff can ‘score’ or rate their institution on a scale of 0-5 (lowest to highest).
These sections are:
● Strategic leadership
● Culture and climate
● Policies and practices
● Programmes and services
● Engagement and advocacy
● Evaluation and accountability
Overall scores were very low – the highest was 20% for strategic leadership and the lowest 12% for evaluation and accountability. Within the self-assessment there was acknowledgement of some good work towards more inclusive practice in certain areas that we are determined to build on, but overall it was felt that this was not always reflected in the RA’s core values. The tabulation and discussion of these results, presented in full to our Council and our Senior Leadership, gives us a sobering baseline for the work that needs to be done.
As a non-government organisation, we have not historically been required to keep data on BAME staff numbers. With the data we have, and in a recent review, we estimate that 13% of our workforce identify as BAME.
Staff engagement
Some of the comments in the staff experiences and feedback have also formed part of our analysis of where we need to focus our work. A small number of the many responses received are noted here.
Programme
…our institutional power needs to be at the centre of our response to Black Lives Matter. For the RA, this is our exhibition programme… this is where we can have the biggest impact, and therefore, where I think we should focus our efforts
Training and recruitment
I have seen first hand the positive impact of unconscious bias training. I would recommend extensive training across the RA.
Working in the arts in London is tough, and you will likely earn below £30k into your 30s, making all sorts of things difficult as an adult, and forming an additional and sometimes insurmountable barrier for those considering a career working for arts organisations. How can equity be achieved in the sector when it is only sustainable as a profession for some?
Workplace culture
I feel like it is an important step to listen to our Black colleagues and gain insight into their experiences (both at the RA and more generally) as Black people experiencing racism. I worry that we could end up with white people talking to white people without truly understanding the daily racism that is faced.
Next steps
As a result of these consultations we are forming working groups that will include staff, students and Royal Academicians, advised by our stakeholders and external consultants. The groups will identify, debate and propose strategies to encourage greater inclusion and diversity in all that we do, to monitor our progress and to hold ourselves accountable. In this way we aim to find new ‘ways in’ to the Royal Academy.
The three groups are focused on:
• Ways in — to Careers at the RA: looking at recruitment, hiring policy, apprenticeships, mentoring, staff training, inclusion, retention, workplace culture, affinity groups, data.
• Ways in — to our Programme: looking at how artists and practitioners can participate as part of the RA’s programme and how to widen the relevance of the work we do to reach underserved audiences. This work includes Exhibitions, Collections, RA Schools, the public programme of talks and lectures, research and outreach.
• Ways in — to Experience the RA: looking at how we address our audiences through press, publications, marketing, digital and social media and how we welcome visitors once they arrive onsite, front of house, security, catering, retail.
We will share the details of each group’s plans and actions here as they evolve and as we identify ways to measure the status quo and any improvement as a result of our work.
We are committed to doing this work to make the RA an anti-racist organisation in a way that is sustained, meaningful and long-term. We want to consult all staff, students and other stakeholders regularly and update quarterly, and on this website, as to steps taken and changes made. We will hold ourselves accountable and we look forward to all the ways we can effect continued change and move towards a situation of more racial equity for our current and future workforce, students, stakeholders and audiences.