Throughout recent crises, many arts institutions have paid lip service to ‘diversity’ whilst firing their most precarious, socially marginalised and racially minoritised workers. Is this hypocrisy? Or is it, perhaps, the cold truth of how institutional discrimination operates today? How should we resist? And what do we want to build instead? Join our speakers to discuss how to move beyond a neoliberal politics of ‘inclusion’ and ‘representation’. How might we organise collectively, to fight racism, sexism, ableism, atomisation and more.
Sonali Bhattacharyya is an activist and award-winning playwright. Her work for the stage includes Megaball (National Theatre Learning), 2066 (Almeida Theatre, Participatory), Slummers (Cardboard Citizens/Bunker), and The Invisible Boy (Kiln Theatre). She’s currently under commission to Kiln Theatre and Fifth Word and is writer in residence with National Theatre Studio. She was elected to Momentum’s National Coordinating Group in July.
Zita is an awards winning human rights and equality campaigner and community and trade union activist, the joint National Chair of Artists' Union England, National Vice President of PCS Union and co founder and National Chair of BARAC UK. She is also a visual artist, designer, curator, poet, writer and author. Zita is part of the UNESCO Coalition of Artists for the General History of Africa and the founder and cut off the Roots Culture Identity art exhibition established by the TUC Race Relations Committee which Zita is elected to , in memory of Stephen Lawrence. She is elected to the TUC Women's Committee and General Federation of Trade Unions National Executive Committee. She is also part of European Public Services Union NEA Committee and co-ordinator of the EPSU BAME workers network and part of the Public Services International Education and Culture committee.
Zita has advised the European Commission on social inclusion and gender in the culture sector and is co-editor of a European wide report into gender discrimination and barriers in the culture sector. She is a co founder of BAME Lawyers for Justice and BME Lawyers for Grenfell.