Creatively Minded & Ethnically Diverse
In early 2021 I was commissioned by the Baring Foundation to produce the introduction to their report on creativity & ethnic diversity.
This report brings together a number of opinion pieces from individuals and organisations reflecting on best practices in ethnic and cultural diversity related to arts and mental health projects. The breadth of experiences shared is vast, both from personal and organisational experience. In this introduction I have attempted to synergise and draw out some of the key themes that run across these valuable contributions.
You may have come to this report because you are keen to hear about how other organisations are tackling diversity. You may be acknowledging that your own organisation has work to do to become more inclusive. Perhaps you are at the very beginning of this journey and it feels like a daunting task to address issues of diversity and inclusivity within your practices. There are key foundational and essential themes that come to mind before the actual participatory engagement even begins, many of which are mentioned in the following opinion pieces.
The issue of diversity is fraught with tensions and complexity, highlighted again with the powerful Black Lives Matter movement across the world in 2020. We – people of all backgrounds – need to enter into conversations and spaces with a willingness to be taught by those with lived experience from the communities that we aim to support. When all of us (whether we are from a minority or in the majority) put our privilege to the side and acknowledge our capacity to learn, great insight and change can begin to happen. The most powerful thing that we can do for others is to be a true ally – by actively listening, understanding, and supporting structural changes and their real-life impacts on participants.
Many of the organisations and projects mentioned in this report span the arts sector, working collaboratively with health organisations, including the NHS. Working
with clinical partners may aid in identifying the clinical needs of participants, but it is the language of the arts and humanities that takes these activities outside of the medical and into the personal. Partnership working – particularly with social prescribing schemes – provides an opportunity for participants to take agency
over their experiences, outside of traditional clinical practices. These impacts on participants provide the opportunity for clinicians to understand the benefits of these arts activities and endorse them. This is particularly important given the cultural status that many clinicians hold. Sabra Khan cites social prescribing as an opportunity for clinicians to validate alternative ways of thinking about mental health and its treatment, particularly when working with South Asian communities. A clinician’s validation and direct referrals to arts and mental health projects are likely to affect levels of engagement in communities that hold the opinion of medical professionals in the highest regard. As the arts come under increasing pressure to pick up the slack of statutory services, the need for collaborative working relationships is paramount in servicing the clinical and cultural needs of those that we support.
Contrastingly, we mustn’t overlook the oppression and inequalities that take place within the mental health system. Dr Errol Francis poignantly highlights the overrepresentation of black people diagnosed with serious mental illness, sectioned under the Mental Health Act and given higher doses of antipsychotic medication. It is therefore highly understandable that the mental health system. may feel hostile, unwelcoming and designed through the lens of the white western world. How do we continue to challenge the inherit racism within a system that persecutes people simply for the colour of their skin?
The work of embracing diversity – and making it sustainable – is not just short term. Just as with any participatory arts approach it takes time and effort to build trust and connections with different communities. Ethnic minority communities are often described as ‘hard to reach’, which I believe is a falsehood. I would argue that they are not hard to reach but that we are not doing the right work to reach them. It will come as no surprise that our approaches to the white, middle classes (who face fewer barriers to the arts in general) are not transferrable to those from culturally diverse communities for a multitude of reasons. It is our duty as commissioners, funders, board members, organisation leads and participatory artists to take stock of what these barriers are and do the work to actively be more inclusive. When time and authenticity is lacking, the exposure of tokenism and its damaging effects on both individuals and their communities becomes abundantly apparent.
As Dr Francis highlights, much of the work being done to challenge racial inequality is often spearheaded by passionate individuals within organisations. Promoting and ensuring that equality exists as a priority within organisations is in everyone’s best interests. We urgently need a charter of best practice that becomes the norm, not the exception. It does not mean that we will get it right the very first time, that we will not fall at the first hurdle or make inappropriate assumptions. However, if we enter into these experiences with a capacity and willingness to learn and understand our mistakes, to listen to those that can lead us, the results – as you will see from this report – can be quite extraordinary.
There is much work to be done for many organisations to become more inclusive and diverse, both internally and with the communities that they support. It may feel overwhelming thinking of how many changes that you want to implement, and just how huge they feel.
I hope that in the coming years we can look at what we can do within ourselves, our organisations and the teams that we support. We can start by looking at the small, realistic changes we can make to our practices – starting with an open heart and a willingness to learn and be taught. It is a long journey ahead but we owe it to ourselves and those that we support to take the first step now.
Themes of Best practice
The themes of best practice mentioned in this report cover both the practical and personal, taking into account successes and their counterpart challenges. These are by no means an exhaustive list, but the starting point in considering how we can genuinely consider and implement inclusivity when it comes to the communities we want to support and deserve our support.
Co-production and participant led
Many of the projects in this report speak of the importance of being led by participants and encouraging them to take ownership over the direction of a project. This deeply prioritises the need for participants to inform delivery partners of what their experiences are and what they truly want and need. This highlights an often unintentional downfall that participatory projects are at risk of falling into: assuming what it is that a particular group (outside of our own culture and experiences) may want to engage in.
By actively consulting with a target group and community stakeholders by asking questions, we can receive the answers that will help us to design and deliver a successful project. Even when designing a project based on consultation, we need to remain flexible in our approach, understanding that the arts and that makes it easier to work with the black community, but they consider the way in which they work. By operating outside of the traditional music therapy model and incorporating the types of music that their participants listen to (soul, rap, R&B etc), they address cultural accessibility with a twofold approach.
Organisations such as Many Minds have highlighted the importance of seeking not just individual stakeholders but existing organisations that can advise on project delivery. Many Minds approached Borderlands, a refugee and asylum seeker charity in Bristol, asking their experience staff and volunteers for advice on how to access and support particular participants.
Cultural sensitivities
If we want to be more inclusive of other cultures we need to show that we have considered their culturally specific access needs sensitively.
This could be considering the time of sessions (for example not coinciding with the Muslim call to prayer), the venue in which an activity takes place, or whether particular groups of people usually and can comfortably congregate together. There may be gender divides or childcare difficulties that could prohibit people from taking part.
Locality
Some of the following op-eds highlight the importance of place and the work that goes into making places and venues accessible. Raw Sounds, based in Brixton (London), comment on being primed to work with the local black population due to the location’s demographic. It is not only their location that makes it easier to work with the black community, but they consider the way in which they work. By operating outside of the traditional music therapy model and incorporating the types of music that their participants listen to (soul, rap, R&B etc), they address cultural accessibility with a twofold approach.
Employing artists with lived experience
Many of the pieces have mentioned the importance of mirroring in the people that deliver projects. When you grow up in a minority your default experience is seeing fewer people, or none at all, who look like you. If we are to build trust, engagement and true understanding of others’ experiences, it starts with those communities being involved in the work from the beginning: from bringing participants into the development of the work, hiring artists that represent that particular community (and understand its complexities), and considering the cultural barriers to participation.
I think many of us are acutely aware of the lack of racial diversity in the arts across the board. We need to look at how to provide more training and opportunities to artists
from different cultural backgrounds to address the imbalance. Many of our culturally diverse communities are at the highest risk of health inequalities, something that Covid-19 has highlighted most recently. Yet those that are key in supporting effective projects — those from these communities — are under-represented and shut out from supporting their own cultures. The organisation Music In Detention note that employing artists of colour ‘often with their own experience of forced migration narrows the gap between leader and group, helping people to relax and feel accepted’. Also that pairing artists in cultural mixes ‘helps show that a session is for people from all backgrounds’.
Artist Dolly Sen highlights how a multiplicity of challenges for artists can impact on their ability to be represented in the arts and health sector. ‘Being part of a racialised community is usually being part of a poor working-class community. Being more likely to be poor, how can you pay for materials, studio space, equipment, how can you take on an unpaid internship if there is no money to pay the rent? Throw in other things like disability, gender and sexuality, and the road becomes even harder.’ How can we challenge these inequalities to create meaningful and sustained opportunities that broaden the representation of artists? Dolly’s calls to action featured in her piece (see page 10) are a good starting point.
Safe spaces
Not all spaces are naturally welcoming and inviting spaces. In the same way that spaces can become gendered, they can feel unwelcoming or uninviting for particular communities. From the food that is on the menu to the décor, we need to carefully consider the venues we use, and the reasonable adjustments that can be made, when working with particular groups.
Sandra Griffiths from The Red Earth Collective talks of the importance of creating safe spaces, noting that in her experience that ‘black people do not access mainstream arts venues as they feel that they do not belong there’. How do we sensitively consider which environments communities consider as their own? Sandra continues to specify that ‘in each setting we consult with the group to define what makes the space safe beyond the physical environment. By doing this we co-create a space together where there is a mutual exchange of creative ideas’.
Working with refugees
A number of the pieces in this report focus on supporting refugees and the complexities and challenges that this poses – from the practical necessities such as employing translators to familiarising refugees to their new local area. Hive, based in Bradford, have identified themes of journeys in their projects, ‘focused on the journeys that BAMER communities have made and their hopes for the future – looking at feet as the metaphor for their travels. We have looked at the journeys refugees have made and the landscapes from their home countries’.
Where language and cultural barriers have felt overwhelming, organisations such as Many Minds have relied on non-verbal techniques, ‘building stories through drawing pictures and acting them out in small groups’.
Challenges to hierarchies
Some of the suggestions mentioned in this report require not only lateral but hierarchical changes that challenge existing structures in place. There is no doubt that there is scope for friction in implementing these changes, as those who hold power are challenged to acknowledge and address their biases, and potentially even step back from particular roles. Too often it is already those in positions of privilege who have access to governing roles. We need to create diversity audits in our boards and teams and provide regular training for those in management positions on the essential importance of diversity and inclusion. As Raw Sounds point out: ‘Going forward we want to get participants more involved in our organisational and governance processes so they have a say in our direction of travel, are more visible to others, and gain experience in different realms of personal and professional development.’ This key work is what breaks down the division between us and them, participant and leader. We are all but people after all, and all of our experiences are valid and valuable.
In order to make arts and mental health projects truly inclusive we need to champion the voices of those with lived experience, from culturally diverse communities, and elevate those voices into positions of power. This means changing the structures of working — from CEOs and boards of trustees, right down to those working on the ground with community groups.
This could include:
trustees recognising their privilege and at times actively recruiting more diverse voices, including those with lived experience and from a variety of cultures;
commissioners taking a more active role in completing diversity audits in their recruitment of artists, and questioning their common practices;
creating an environment where it feels safe to question and call out bad practices (whether intentional or not) in order to truly highlight diversity deficits.
Intersectionality
Intersectionality must not be forgotten when we consider arts and mental health, as no one person is simply one thing. My personal difficulty with umbrella terms such as BAME is that they simply create one singular category for non-white people, yet fail to acknowledge the cultural and individual complexities that go beyond a single ethnicity. People are not simply Asian – they are men, women, disabled, LGBTQIA+, rich, financially content, poor, and far more. We must go beyond solely ethnicity and consider the multi-faceted dimensions of people’s identity, considering the ways in which this can encourage or prohibit engagement.
The Race Equality Foundation pulls out the importance of considering ‘that intersections between ethnicity, social class and disability exert an impact on representation and engagement’. Noting that the overrepresentation of non-white ethnic communities with mental health difficulties is ‘combined with being more likely to be socio-economically deprived, which serves as a compounding barrier to engaging with the arts as a result of cultural and financial exclusion’. These compounding factors of health inequalities, poverty, poor housing (and many more) are all contributing factors that affect engagement in arts and mental health projects.
We must also consider that many people, particular those of mixed heritage, often sit in limbo spaces between multiple cultures. As a queer man of both British and Caribbean heritage I sit between multiple identities that have posed lifelong difficulties. Growing up I found myself too brown to fit in with my white peers, but too white to be accepted by my black peers. As a queer man I have been exoticised in white spaces or felt uninvited in black spaces. Intersectionality poses countless questions – some which we may never have answers to – but that must be considered.
The language that we use
In my role at Free Space Project (an arts and health charity based within primary care in London) I have delivered a number of arts and mental health projects without specifically referring to the phrase ‘mental health’ at all. As Sabra Khan mentions in her op-ed piece ‘there is no word for depression in Urdu or Hindi I am told. Possibly the closest word is ‘dukh’ which means pain, but also sadness or suffering’. The way in which we speak about mental health and distress is unique to the times in which we were raised, where we were raised, our culture, and our individual and familial experiences. For some people a diagnosis is a lifeline, an explanation of why they feel the way that they feel and, hopefully, a gateway to access treatment. For others a diagnosis is a label, a stigma heaped on them by society that becomes a dark cloud of shame.
In medicine we pathologise people and their experiences to understand their symptoms so that a diagnosis can be ascertained, followed by treatment or intervention. In the arts we have the freedom to be more liberal in the way that we define a process and a desired outcome. We have the flexibility in our language to encompass people who may identify as having a mental health difficulty and diagnosis, and those that find themselves in pain or lonely, plus all of those in between.
As a young person with clear mental health difficulties I did not have the emotional vocabulary to understand my struggles, but I did understand that I was living in mental pain. When people – both clinicians and non-medics – engaged with me first as a person, rather than a clinical checklist, I began to slowly discover my own path to understanding and becoming well. The language that we use in how we describe people and the activities that we provide can make or break the engagement of participants.
The arts and health sectors are clearly two distinctly different worlds, yet across these projects we strive for the same outcome: improving the lives of those that we support. In order for the two sectors to work together successfully we must find a way to respect our different ways of working whilst developing a common, collaborative language that champions the positive impacts of the arts on mental health.
An organisation may receive referrals from a clinical pathway that identifies participants as living with a personality disorder, but how do we transform the language that we use in the arts to destigmatise this. How can we proactively change the language that we use to empower those to engage with the arts to reap the benefits on their own terms?