The Rose’s purpose is to help young people shape and utilize their voices to make a better community.
Over the last few months, thanks largely to the activism of young people, our society has recognized the need to do more to value the lives and contributions of Black people. The Rose has been considering ways it can revise its existing Inclusion plan to create the transformational change needed at this time.
These are some of the actions we commit to taking:
Internal Transformation
- We commit to revising our hiring and board recruitment practices to include more BIPOC team members.
- Knowing that welcoming more BIPOC team members into our organization cannot be simply transactional, we will make The Rose a more welcoming and supportive group by also taking the following steps:
- Re-upping our commitment to training all staff and board members on bias and inclusion as an ongoing practice.
- Creating accountability and learning groups for staff members to examine individual behaviors that can be more anti-racist. Creating a BIPOC staff group to connect and heal.
- Continuing to heed the recommendations of our staff Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility committee for ways to make our policies and resource allocations more anti-racist.
- Undertake a policy and procedure review through an anti-racism lens and updating accordingly.
- Require regular vendors to have anti-racism policies in place.
Programming Transformation
- We commit to centering more BIPOC artists in our work:
- What gets measured, gets done. Therefore, we will share data on the composition of our creative teams, casts, and playwrights with the board and staff on a regular basis, with a goal of having at least 50% BIPOC artists.
- We are creating a less-centralized season selection process that is more broadly inclusive of staff and board input.
- We recognize that by using industry standard audition practices, privilege can play a significant role in audition success, particularly for youth artists. Therefore, we will revise our audition processes through an equity lens.
- We will revise our curriculum to include more work by BIPOC artists and to include developmentally appropriate anti-racism skill building.
These steps are ways we can reinforce and increase the ambition of our Inclusion plan, which is an iterative tool for remaining responsive to what we learn. They do not represent a complete anti-racism map for The Rose, but a committed overview of our path through the next 1-3 years. We hope they form a basis for holding our organization accountable in its efforts to actively transform our society.
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