The Crescent Theatre values diversity and wants to celebrate diversity in all aspects of theatre. As an
organisation, we have realised that there is more we can do to promote inclusivity and further
actions that we can take to improve engagement in the theatre.

The Crescent Theatre and its Board of Management are making a pledge to be actively engaged in making The Crescent
a more inclusive place. We want to remove the barriers that may currently exist and provide
opportunities to underrepresented communities to become involved in the theatre, both as
members and audience.

The way that we will do this is by developing an action plan and implementing some steps to start
the process of becoming a more inclusive environment. Below are some of the first steps we will
take.

  • We will create an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy. We will then ensure that everyone
    who needs to play a part in the implementation of this policy understands their role and
    ensure they never infringe the rights of others through their behaviour.
  • Where an actor’s personal characteristics are incidental to a role, we will cast the role as
    such. We will cast Crescent productions in a colour conscious way and actors from diverse
    backgrounds (on the basis of gender, ethnicity and disability) will be considered for any role
    and not confined to those written with their own personal characteristics in mind.
  • When casting roles written for characters with diverse backgrounds we will take care and
    consideration to ensure that the actor reflects the character’s characteristics where it is
    relevant.
  • When considering the season programme, we will do our best to try and include events that
    reflect our local Birmingham community and modern British society as a whole.
  • We will start outreach work. This means we will start to engage with the Birmingham
    community and cultivate links with community projects and organisations that may be able
    to introduce more diversity into our membership.
  • We will start collating data and then monitoring and reporting on the changes we make in
    improving the diversity of our membership and audience. This will ensure that the steps we
    are taking are not tokenistic and are actually facilitating real change.

This is not an exhaustive list of measures that The Crescent will take; the action plan that is developed
will be more in depth, will identify who is going to action these steps, look at timescales and will be
regularly monitored by the Board of Management.

Downloads

Crescent EDI Policy – updated July 2022