Business and Arts Newfoundland and Labrador (BANL) believes that the arts, and all forms of cultural expression, have a unique role to play in advancing our understanding and support of the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in our creative practices. The arts can bring challenging and different perspectives to the advancement of EDI. BANL has a uniquely important role in supporting this discussion by helping arts organizations with governance and leadership built on EDI principles. We note here that decolonization should be deeply embedded in the commitment to EDI principles and practices.
Through its focus on assisting arts organizations with best governance practices and with facilitating sound, sustainable operations, BANL wishes to foreground the importance of a commitment to EDI in our communities.
Our EDI Framework briefly explores some of the context specific to the arts and culture community in Newfoundland and Labrador at this point in time, and outlines our expressed commitment to the transformational change necessary to advance equity, diversity, inclusion and decolonization by those within the communities we serve.
In this document, we also outline eleven items that help bridge the gap between values and actions. These are the key components of our organization’s current EDI Action Plan.
We have also developed an internal Working Policy to help ensure that we are building our programming in way is keeps these values at the centre of our work.
All of these documents are available for download below, and we encourage other organizations to read, use, or adapt these resources as they wish.
