Two-way street

The stereotype of the rural Marches, the main audience catchment area for Ludlow Assembly Rooms, is that of ‘Middle England’ – white, middle class, exclusive, prejudiced and resistant to change. The area may not have as much diversity as its urban counterparts, but there is a wide range of people who live here. The 2001 census lists 3,431 people from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities in Shropshire, 48 families from the Gypsy and travelling population across the county, and an increasing number of migrant workers. With a small population in our catchment (40,000 people within a 15-mile radius), many of whom are on low wages, ensuring each customer’s needs are met – through programming, marketing, pricing, customer service and building access – is vital to our survival. Seventy-eight per cent of revenue is earned income and budgets are extremely tight, so each of our 200,000 annual visits, whether by people living locally or by tourists, is needed.

People know their neighbours in the countryside. What’s more, they talk to them, and customer feedback circulates fast and freely. If there have been any issues the night before, I will surely be told about them by someone during the short walk to work. Word of mouth is a major sales tool. When researching suitable diversity courses for staff and volunteers, there seemed to be something missing. Legal aspects, statistics, definitions and benefits were covered, but what we do so well in the rural regions was lacking – a two-way conversation with a diverse range of people. We decided to train a team from our staff to design our own course, actively involving a wide range of people from the community and using the arts to give a voice to personal stories which communicate and reinforce the statutory message.

We attended Arts Council England ‘Respond’ training; trained all senior staff as trainers; got a grant to cover set up costs for our first training day; advertised casual paid positions for Community Diversity Ambassadors which encouraged the ‘hard to reach’ to feel valued and step forward; and worked with these ambassadors to design and deliver the day in partnership with local companies, including Simon Hammond TV and Video Productions. The day also included a performance of monologues from Pentabus Theatre’s ‘White Open Spaces’. It was so successful that we were booked to run further bespoke courses for Voluntary Action, arts organisations and local schools. Most recently, we have been funded to design an arts-based toolkit to challenge prejudice, which will be available on the web in the New Year, and our team is now geared up to run diversity training for other arts centres. Our work helps our finances and is having a ripple effect in the town. BME artists are returning to the area on holiday with their families, and our audience has recently voted the subtitled film ‘The Lives of Others’ best film of 2007. Getting everyone involved in the process of creating the training day was the best way to raise the diversity awareness of the team, who are proud of their achievements – not least in dispelling the myth about ‘Middle Englanders’ and showing that rural people are engaged with our global world and actively participating in it.