“We’ve always had a commitment and a desire to diversify our workforce to better reflect the people that we work with and for… We’re very industry specific and we know from previous recruitment rounds that we don’t have a really wide way of reaching out to people who wouldn’t necessarily consider us as an employer. That is the hugest thing… to be part of something bigger that allows us to start that reach and move forward with that.” – Lucy
Joining STEP 3 was timely for East London Dance, having secured joint funding from the Mayor of London’s Greater London Authority (GLA) Good Growth Fund for £1 million, to create the UK’s first National Talent House for urban culture in Stratford, alongside music talent development organisation, talent incubator and educator Urban Development.
“It was too good an opportunity to miss out on… we realised that the opportunity would actually really benefit going alongside our capital project as a moment of growth.” – Lucy
The decision to join STEP was also influenced by other employers on the programme. East London Dance have a long-standing partnership with Sadler’s Wells Theatre.
“I know Sadler’s are such a strong promotor or STEP, I can’t imagine we’d have got this far without them singing STEP’s praises.” – Lucy
STEP has buy-in across the organisation with various members of staff including former Chief Executive & Artistic Director (maternity leave), Executive Director, Organisation Change Manager, Partnerships & Development Manager, Programme Director and Communications Manager involved. Due to the nature of East London Dance’s small scale, resources have been pooled. Various members of staff have attended Employers Sessions such as Employer Induction, Creative Access Inclusive Leadership Training and STEP Celebration.
As a new organisation, it makes sense to take as much as absorb as much as possible. To give participants the best chance but also for our own learning… We’re going through organisational change… all of the processes are useful for us to incorporate. – Ben
We’ve realised that in order to support a more diverse range of people to be recruited, we need to have a more robust procedure. – Lucy
East London Dance are huge advocates of paying trainees London Living Wage, they are interested to work with other STEP Employers so see what more can be done.
I think it’s great… it’s a good starting point but I’d like to see it go further. It doesn’t necessarily take into account other barriers to employment that people face in the creative sector… I would be interested to see if there was a future for us and STEP as a [employer] cohort to fund the removal of barriers such as housing, caring responsibilities and disability access needs. It’s obviously absolutely great but how can we do more… what’s next? – Lucy
STEP presents opportunities to smaller scale organisations such as East London Dance to work in partnership with like-minded and active employers looking to create the workforce of the future.
We as an organisation work and thrive on collaboration, if we didn’t collaborate, we couldn’t do half of the things that we do! We certainly recognise that collaboration across every aspect of work - whether it’s artistic, whether it’s to do with careers access - is really important. I think you can always achieve much more if you’re working as a team and it just opens up the options to everyone… and the larger it grows… [the more] opportunities for participants, consistency across the sector and commitment to inclusivity. – Ben
With employers working together and in partnership, resources can be shared to develop new methods of recruitment and training.