Equalities

The killing of George Floyd in the US represents a tipping point in the narrative of the global struggle for equality and at Hospitalfield we support the work of the Black Lives Matter movement absolutely and without question. It is shameful that it has taken these recent events to motivate a wave of support, but now is the time to act and to use this urgency to influence and create change.

Hospitalfield was founded as a charity and opened as an art college in 1902. Since this time its aims have been to support artists. Now more than ever, we are reminded that we must think about the continuous renewal of the way in which we run the organisation to meet the needs of artists, our audiences and the community in which we are based.

Our commitment at Hospitalfield is to provide equal opportunity and access for all; to be open to continual learning, to consider how to effect change where this is needed. A significant part of this commitment must be to reject racism in all its forms as we re-open and expand in the future. We recognise that we must take specific and realisable actions to ensure that we are meeting these commitments.

Hospitalfield will re-open over the coming six months post pandemic and, as we do so, we will prioritise the commitment to our Anti-Racism Action, as follows:

Actions

• Provide unconscious bias and anti-racism training for staff and board members.
• Measure and evaluate change as a result of this training on a regular basis ensuring that the Action Statement is a topic within all meeting agendas.
• Use the principles of positive action to appoint staff and board members to ensure that there is wider representation at the levels of decision making.
• Renew and publish our equal opportunities policy.
• Establish a funding stream within the organisation that will enable dialogue with black artists, curators and writers and artists of colour. We would like to engage in an exchange that will result in affecting change; the sort of change that results in ensuring that the programmes at Hospitalfield meets the needs of artists equally.
• As we progress with our work with collections management we commit to prioritising collections research and activity within the historic collections at Hospitalfield that reveals the multiplicity of histories, particularly those that have previously been obscured or unacknowledged. The archives here make connections outwards to local, regional and national archives and we see this as an opportunity to develop this approach beyond Hospitalfield itself.
• Hospitalfield will communicate to our audiences and stakeholders our commitments and values in terms of race and equality. We will develop dialogue within our local context which is particular to Angus and continue discussions with our international network which connects us to the world.

Image
A photo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., left, kneeling to lead a group of civil rights workers and Selma black people in prayer on Feb. 1, 1965 in Selma, Alabama USA after they were arrested on charges of parading without a permit.

Martin Luther King (1929-1968) was an American Christian minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement in the USA from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience.