Wales Millennium Centre should be a creative home for everyone – an equal, fair and inclusive creative environment where everyone can belong and be themselves.  

We work with artists, young people and communities to tell their stories in the ways they want to, helping diverse voices and perspectives to be celebrated and heard.   

Opening up our building as a resource and making space for people to share their cultures, skills and experiences is an important part of this and brings this public building to life with experiences, events and exhibitions.  

We will always work hard to remove barriers, enabling everyone to participate and share in the magic.  

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) must also extend beyond our public spaces and programmes and permeate every aspect of our organisation including leadership, management, governance and decision-making. Paying attention in equal measure to strategy, systems and process as well as our culture, values and behaviours is the only way that we will create sustained inclusion. 

Over the past two years we have reflected on our underlying values, both internally with our staff and externally with our partners, in our pursuit of positive change. This has allowed us to identify and further address barriers to inclusion. We continue to welcome the support and feedback of our audiences and collaborators in holding us accountable to our commitments. 

SO, WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE LAST TWO YEARS? 

Since the publication of our Action Plan we have concentrated on building the foundation of our Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, fostering equitable recruitment practices and celebrating a culture of inclusion within our workforce. This has included co-produced programmes and activities in consultation with diverse young audiences, fostering engagement and representation.  

We have engaged with our community ambassadors from across Wales, learning from their unique perspectives and experiences to support the development of our community ticketing scheme. This has opened up opportunities for over 6,000 people to enjoy performances that they would otherwise not have been able to engage with for a range of reasons. We established an organisation-wide staff network (Newid) to accelerate cultural change. Newid has focused on interventions that address specific areas of underrepresentation or a lack of knowledge and experience amongst our people and ways of working. This includes our Welsh Language focus group that continues to look at Welsh culture and identity to move beyond language standards and be more inclusive, and a commitment to keep learning through facilitated lived experience dialogues that have been instrumental in identifying and driving positive change. 

We also created more opportunities for the ways we work to be informed by different external perspectives through our Creative Associates and Youth Collective.  

We made space for others by putting co-production at the heart of what we do and built relationships with partners, for example Boss and Brew Academy and Tiger Bay Security, who are now a huge part of Wales Millennium Centre. They focus on tackling unemployment and supporting young people from global majority backgrounds. 

By working with young people, communities and artists and developing new spaces, we have created more opportunities for talented people from diverse backgrounds to engage and create with us. Through participatory budgeting and co-design processes, we have encouraged inclusivity across the building and invested in new voices and ideas. 

OUR CONSCIOUS ACTIONS FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS:  

We will demand focus from our senior leaders to ensure diversity and inclusion are central to our strategy and planning. As we have done with Tiger Bay Security, we will continue our conversations to share lived experiences across the organisation and continue to develop partnerships that have a positive impact on the employment opportunities of local people.  

We will ensure that our physical environment and service delivery do not present barriers to engagement by continuously reviewing our approach and work to better understand the requirements of our own people and visitors.    

We will encourage learning and empower each other to challenge behaviour, be inquisitive and explore solutions to create a culture of positive change that acknowledges that this work is everyone’s responsibility.   

We will offer a high-quality, inclusive bilingual experience to all our customers, visitors and staff which is respectful of language choice, and uphold the Welsh Language Standards.       

We will make space for different voices in our organisation and spaces, increasing access, investment and opportunities for all, with a focus on those who are underrepresented.  

We will align systems and structures across the organisation to help us collect data and information that can highlight gaps in our work, demonstrate progress and hold us accountable.    

We want to actively drive positive change, be consciously inclusive and acknowledge our privilege.  If you have any feedback or need to raise an issue – positive, constructive or a complaint – click here to find out how to get in touch.