What is Fair Chance?
Fair Chance is a conversation that we will have each year with everybody in the artsUCL community to think about what we can do to ensure our opportunities both are, and feel, as fair and inclusive as they can possibly be.
It’s a conversation about how opportunities are conceived and how decisions are made. It’s about the processes, cultures and perceptions around auditions, casting and role allocation for artsUCL productions. And it’s a conversation about ‘giving opportunity’ in a student-led environment more generally - how we acknowledge power dynamics, and how we support everyone to continue to raise the bars of best practice.
We want to hear your experiences, tap into your opinions and be inspired by your ideas. We want to know more about the brilliant initiatives that are already in play, and we want to develop support structures to enable us to be even better in the future.
Why do we need it?
artsUCL is an extraordinary furnace of creative opportunity, with students putting on shows, events, competitions, galas, workshops and exhibitions almost every day of the week. There are so many opportunities students are creating for their peers, and so many auditions, castings, pitches, biddings, competitions or application processes that come with them.
We are proud of our community and how it brings students together. However, with strong community comes strong friendships, close-knit collaborative relationships and natural conflicts of interest. We develop special bonds through our creative partnerships, as well as insight into each other’s skills, artistry and potential over time. This can sometimes lead, rightly or wrongly, to perceptions of favouritism and an uneven playing field.
We're also committed to creating a truly inclusive space where everyone feels welcome. We want our societies, our spaces, our creative work and the stories we tell to be representative of all our students, and in particular those whose voices are under-represented in our society. We are dedicated to elevating the voices of the Global Majority, LGBTQIA+ community, International students, Disabled students, women-only spaces, and other underrepresented groups, ensuring that everyone has genuine opportunities to participate. So, as we grow, it is more important than ever to do everything we can to ensure that access to opportunities are fair, and feel fair, in our student-led environment.
How will it work and how can I get involved?
Fair Chance will start with conversations with student leaders and the committees of arts societies, before reaching out to the whole community through a combination of online surveys, listening circles, drop-ins and data gathering. We will post these on our Instagram page, include them in our newsletter, artsFocus, and send surveys out directly to the community.
You can also get in touch with us directly by emailing [email protected], and putting Fair Chance in the subject line.
We will then co-create a new artsUCL Code of Practice to support societies and project leaders to evolve their own rules, structures and processes for ‘giving opportunity’.