Sunshine And Summer Programmes
Theatres In Yorkshire Make Cautious Plans To Re-Open. Plus What's On This Week, Resources And News
Priorities, priorities… Nina Simon (brilliant name, NOT to be confused with the jazz singer) has shared her thoughts about ‘inclusion’ in an Arts Council blog. Nina founded a charity called Of/By/Forall which provides digital tools to “help public institutions matter more to more people”.
It’s easy to become exasperated by woke excesses. (I do, often, as you’ve probably noticed!) There’s one mainstage in Yorkshire which has plastered its webside landing page with images of people of colour. That’s fine, until you remember that the theatre in question serves one of the whitest communities in the UK. (I checked.) The major issues facing that community are:
deprivation
low education levels and bad schools
zero social mobility
ageing population
crumbling infrastructure.
I know the theatre in question is doing conscientous outreach work. But the impression is of a well-funded spaceship landing on a poor town with communication channels set to “you’re all racist!”. In a very collapsed bit of the…