EQUAL: Diversifying the Gallery Education Workforce
background
The EQUAL project was run as part of an initiative for EU member states to work
together to develop common solutions to common European problems. This sharing
of information, research and experiences aimed to create new ways to combat
labour market discrimination and inequality in the workplace.
engage was one of the partners under the
Creative Renewal programme, promoted by
Metier (now EQ) which was part of the larger
EQUAL initiative.
Creative Renewal aimed to work towards making the arts and entertainment
sector more representative of society as a whole. Research and pilot projects
were developed with/by and for people with disabilities; minority ethnic
communities; and work was undertaken to tackle gender stereotypes.
Vision
To promote a workforce which is diverse, accessible, and professional,
including understanding of diversity issues in art practice and in employment
issues and to ensure gallery educators are trained to embrace diversity in
their own practice.
Basis
Gallery educators have a key role in promoting the broadest cultural access to
galleries and the visual arts, as mediators and as employers and they also work
directly with many millions of children, young people, adult visitors to
galleries annually. Gallery educators are for many the prime interface with the
visual arts, and so have a significant role in empowering the widest possible
audience, and embracing issues of gender, cultural diversity, and disability.
They are committed to building cultural access at all levels of society. Their
role is not only themselves to engage visitors' interest and promote their
visual literacy, but also to write policies and design programmes, and to
employ and train artists and other part-time/freelance staff. (for more
information about gallery education,
click here.)
However the role of gallery educator is relatively new with this change in
approach starting off in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the input of
Arts Council England and Local Authority support and proactive work by
the independent gallery sector. This included a move towards the access and
inclusion agenda from the 1980s onwards. Previously there was little effort to
empower audiences to cultural access, with curators' prime responsibility being
to art objects, to scholarship and to conservation.
Gallery education has grown dramatically since then. It is estimated that c.
500 new practitioners - on either a part-time/freelance or full-time basis -
currently enter this field every year.
However, entry-level training and professional development are virtually
non-existent.
engage has been instrumental in
developing training courses, however it is clear that this provision is totally
inadequate in securing a diverse, well-trained workforce.
In the absence of professional entry-level routes, entry to the workforce has
been primarily through first degrees in Fine Art and Art History and related
Humanities degrees. This means that the workforce is at present highly
imbalanced in cultural diversity, disability, and gender.
Workplan
The workplan included the following elements which ranged from research to
training and dissemination. For more details of the individual areas, please
follow the links or contact engage.
This programme ended March 2005, however
engage has
continued to build on much of this work through its Diversity Strategy and
Action Plan.
More information can be found by following the links above or in the
engage in diversity section of this site.
