On June 1, 2020 Inis Nua shared a public statement in support of Black Lives Matter and promised to “challenge ourselves to work to better understand systemic racism, our own complicity in this system, and to do better.” We have taken the weeks since then to gather and discuss what that means for our company.

In this unique moment in history, as theatre production is effectively suspended globally, we have been given the opportunity to pause and reconsider how we are to proceed as a community of artists.

We recognize that diversity starts with taking action, being transparent and accountable. We commit to this and the hard work involved. We wanted to share with our community some current action items that we are pursuing. We acknowledge that these are just first steps and we commit to continuing to examine our institutional culture to ensure our present and our future as an open, respectful and safe theatre space for all employees and audiences.

Inis Nua recognizes that, in our company's past programming, we have focused on the limited understanding of the Irish and British experience through a white cultural lens. This does not fully represent contemporary theatre from Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales nor does it absolve us from the responsibility to amplify the voices of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) - in the UK, BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) - and marginalized communities, which reflect those cultures’ new identities in today’s world.  Contemporary populations and culture on the Islands of Ireland and Great Britain are diverse and Inis Nua is committed to continuing to improve its presentation of work by diverse playwrights as well as plays on issues affecting people from marginalized communities in these nations.

As Inis Nua begins development of our new strategic plan in early fall, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion will be one of the foundations of our process. As we move forward, we will re-examine our mission statement and our company values to ensure they reflect these ideals and hold ourselves accountable to them.

In anticipation of the development of our new strategic plan, we will engage in the following actions:

1. We commit to continue to broaden the stories we tell to reflect the diversity of race, ethnicity, faith, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity that make up these countries and our own community.
    
2. We commit to bringing voices from marginalized communities with a focus on BIPOC into our programming discussions by actively investigating options to create a diverse research/reading panel of artists and educators who are interested in the work of Inis Nua and in assisting the company to widen its search into additional communities and resources.
    
3. We commit to seeking the funds to make an open call for scripts and to commission plays both within these territories - and in the United States that support the above and our mission to cultivate contemporary work from American playwrights who deal with the Irish-American, Welsh-American, Scottish-American and Anglo-American experience, thus allowing Inis Nua a broader reach into the communities of people it represents in Europe and locally.
    
4. We commit to continuing to expand the diversity of artists and production personnel with whom we work. We will address how we reflect this in our strategy meetings and seek to find new ways of engaging artists in our work with a strong focus on ways that will reach marginalized communities with a focus on BIPOC. We will address clarity on what may appear to be a lack of inclusiveness in our mission statement.
    
5. We commit to providing a safe working environment by providing clear guidelines and access to support contacts and systems for artists. And we commit to creating clear processes for staff and production teams to make complaints or express concerns regarding racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or ableist behavior in order to create a culture of transparency and accountability.
    
6. We commit to engaging sensitivity consultants on productions where content may be emotionally challenging or traumatic to the individuals involved, with special care paid to marginalized communities.
    
7. We commit to better representation of our community through a more diverse board by actively recruiting people from marginalized communities with a focus on BIPOC candidates and identifying and eliminating possible barriers to board membership.
    
8. We commit to conducting ongoing Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion training, Bias training, and Anti-Racism training for staff and board.
    
9. We commit to creating a safe and welcoming space for audiences and will ensure that Front of House supports and promotes our values toward Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, anti-bias, and anti-racism.
    
10. We will invite an annual accountability audit so that both the company and the community may evaluate our progress.

We are grateful to the many individuals, especially those in the BIPOC community, who have brought Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and the lack thereof in the theatre community to the forefront of the conversation and done so much to keep the theatre community accountable.