Empowering Change: Wheelworks Arts' ChangeMaker Initiative for Race Equality Week 2024

As Race Equality Week unfolds across the UK from 5th to 11th February 2024, Wheelworks Arts (WWA) proudly reflects on its commitment to promoting racial equality, tolerance, and integration through various programmes conducted over the past year including its ChangeMaker (CM) programme.

Race Equality Week 2024, guided by the theme #ListenActChange, seeks to sustain momentum and expedite transformative action by rallying myriad organisations towards a concerted effort to confront race inequality within workplaces. This theme, coined by the Race Equality Matters (REM) community, underscores the pressing need for substantive action over mere rhetoric.

Building upon the foundation laid in the previous year, which underscored the collective responsibility for racial equality in the workplace (#ItsEveryonesBusiness), the 2024 theme #ListenActChange calls for decisive action. It advocates for a shift from passive listening and discussion to active engagement and tangible outcomes.

To help promote greater racial equity and tolerance in society, Wheelworks Arts (WWA) has been working on ChangeMaker (CM) over the last few months. The CM programme is a revolutionary educational journey, seamlessly blending coaching and artistic techniques to delve into the vital realm of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within professional spheres.

It explores differences to foster interpersonal understanding, helping to cultivate a sense of organisational belonging, improve workforce morale and retention, and, ultimately, boost productivity. CM invites participants to get involved in artistic activities, using life coaching techniques that act as a catalyst for cooperation, discussion, and exploration, bringing all together on a shared creative journey towards personal transformation.

Throughout engaging and participatory sessions, attendees not only acquire hands-on skills but also delve into a profound exploration of biases, uncovering innovative methods to foster inclusivity within the workplace.

CM uses creative techniques in a coaching framework to foster a sense of belonging and improve cooperation in the workplace. The training equips employees with the knowledge and skills to develop their own personal understanding, which leads to a better understanding of others.

The course explores perceptions, stereotypes, and misconceptions that workshop participants may have, with a view to understanding other contributors' values, heritage, biases, and experiences, and why people may have certain views or stereotypes. It also highlights how many of these perspectives may be unintentional, unconscious, and often unchallenged.

Coaching by WWA facilitators and artists supports the reflective journey that participants undertake collectively, and this is used as a platform to discuss points of view on difference, issues of conflict, questions of identity, and perceptions of the ‘other’ that group members may have.

CM may work with groups drawn from different community traditions, different genders or sexual orientations, or people drawn from different religious backgrounds, geographical areas, social classes, and demographic groups.

The course is delivered in a collaborative workshop format, aiming to get participants to reflect on their own identity, how they perceive others, and how others may perceive them. The purpose is to help improve mutual understanding, raise the possibility of personal change, and encourage acceptance of the differences in others; but also, to propose that pride in oneself and community need not conflict with the difference of others. It seeks to demonstrate that many of the attitudes people hold are often held unconsciously, and only by acknowledging them can people make conscious decisions to change.