What are we talking about? What should we do? How can we engage proactively?

This one-day conference running 9am – 4pm, will consider what can be done to effect change and offer space for participants to talk through the issues and come to some practical solutions and ways forward for their own contexts. The conference will bring together experts and practitioners from the worlds of professional and amateur theatre who have already made a difference, offering an open and safe space of shared learning.

The conference is open to all – individuals, theatre groups, drama festival organisers and any interested parties. The day will be jointly curated by Penny Amis, Chair of the Side By Side Theatre Company of Leamington Spa, and Anne-marie Greene, who is Professor of Diversity and Work at the University of York as well as being Artistic Director of the Criterion Theatre, Coventry, which has put Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the heart of everything they do.

Other contributors include: Ian Wainwright, Participation Producer at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre of Stratford-on-Avon; Nyasha Daley, artist and Trustee at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry and Coventry Pride; and Elim Leigh and Georgia Kelly, local artists and playwright and who acted in the 2021 award-winning production ‘Queers – The Monologues’. Conference tickets, priced £12 each, are now available via the Albany Theatre Box Office.

Some of you may have met Anne-marie when she delivered a session on EDI at our National Conference in Southport. This conference offers an opportunity to have extended time within a workshop setting to talk through perspectives, issues and plans in relation to the individual contexts of your theatres.

In the evening The Criterion is performing Act 2 of ‘The Gift’: see more details HERE .There is accommodation at the Premier Inn next to the Albany Theatre.

Anne Gilmour