 I'm delighted to introduce our two breakfast briefers. First of all, Andrea Metcalf, who has just appeared on my screen and hopefully on yours, the National Archives' new director of people, inclusion and change. So Andrea is responsible for delivering our commitment to further strengthen culture and approach so that we continually strive to better reflect and represent the society we serve. She's focused on developing and leading our people strategy, building an organizational culture, delivering the new ways of working programme and building a more representative workforce which sets a strong example and influences change across the archive sector. Andrea was formerly deputy director of people and culture at ActionADUK and has a wealth of experience in HR, diversity and inclusion, organizational change and development and coaching. She's previously been a director of a number of HR consultancies working across various sectors and also a university lecturer specializing in employment law, coaching and mentoring. Andrea, can I invite you to say hello? Hello, everyone. And I'm really delighted to be here this morning. I am a woman in my early fifties. I'll push it a little bit. I've got very short brown hair, brown eyes and I am wearing a purple top. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'd also like to introduce Rachel Minott. I think Rachel's hopefully going to appear on our screens any moment now. Rachel is a Jamaican born artist, curator and researcher. She's currently Inclusion and Change Manager at the National Archives and she's also a trustee of the Museum of Homelessness. Previously, she's been chair of the Museum Association's decolonizing guidance working group and curator for the Horniman Museum and Gardens, Birmingham Museum's Trust and London Transport Museum. As an artist, she's exhibited internationally. Rachel's going to be taking up the role of Joint Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the National Archives at the end of this month. So it was only announced yesterday. So we're delighted to have Rachel. You've just even started yet. So we're deeply grateful to her for appearing with us. So Rachel, welcome. Can't see you at the moment. So if you could turn your camera on, that would be great. But if you can't, it would still be great if we could still invite you to say hello and introduce yourself if you're struggling with the technology. Rachel. Good morning, everyone. I've turned my camera on and off again. Hopefully, eventually I shall appear. But it's really lovely to join everyone. My name is Rachel Minott. I'm my preferred pronouns are she, her. I have brown curly hair and wearing glasses, a chunky headset, some fabulous earrings and a white shirt, which hopefully those who are sighted can see when the camera works. I'm also a mixed race, but I don't really know how to describe that visually, but I know that it's important to put that context in. Thank you very much, Rachel. And I know that the team are working with you to get the camera issue sorted. So hopefully we'll see you on screen as soon as we can. So introductions over. I want to now open the conversation. So I want to start with Andrea. So these are both new roles, Andrea, your own as director of People Inclusion and Change. And obviously, as soon as you came in, you've created a second role and you head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. And I wanted to start by asking you, why did the National Archives create these roles? Or why did they create your role? And then why did you create the second role? And why now? Thanks, well, I think the why now is very much linked to our strategy archives for everyone. Since the start of the strategy, we've been doing some really great work around inclusion in particular. And in fact, in terms of our strategy, the inclusion element really came from our staff, which is absolutely great. And what that means is that there's lots and lots of different work going on in different teams. And I think it was felt by the exec team that actually they needed someone to bring it all together to really look strategically at how we look after our people, how we do change and make sure that inclusion is embedded in all of that. So I think that's why they then went out to recruit. And when I joined, I was very excited that the exact team was also very much on board with a head of diversity, equity and inclusion role. Because actually, in order for us to get real momentum, we need people really focused on it and dedicated to it, which is why we have recruited to the role. And I'm really excited that both of our co-heads are internal and are gonna be quite a duo, I think. And it really does strengthen our approach to inclusion. And hopefully, we'll also strengthen our ability to support the sector and learn from the sector as well. Definitely two-way. Excellent. Thanks very much. I can see Rachel is still battling to get her camera working. So I'm gonna stay with you Andrea for the moment, if you don't mind. And then we can tell Rachel that not only obviously she's trying to do her camera, it's difficult to focus on answering questions. So what do you want to achieve in an ideal world? Which we're not in, but that we can, but we can retrieve. What are your aims? What do you want to achieve in the role? Okay, so if we think of the role of the National Archives in five, 10 years. What I would really like is for everyone to feel a sense of belonging here, whether they are working here or whether they are interacting with us in any shape or form. I really want everyone to just instinctively embrace the advantages of having diverse opinions in the conversation. And that includes working more closely with partners and the community. So I'd like us to be much more co-creating and actually enabling other archives to tell their stories rather than us think that we need to do all of that ourselves. So very much this whole kind of co-creation piece. And to make sure that all communities are represented, both in terms of our workforce and all the work that we're doing. So that comes from research, the way we interact with academia, the way we interact with other archives that there's a humility and a sense of sharing and learning. That's my ideal world. That sounds really exciting. So back in the real world, and hopefully we, on a serious note, we want to make sure that the real moves towards the ideal, what are you gonna start with? Because that's quite a lot there, getting representation from all the communities we serve, co-creation and so on, all great things. Where are you gonna start? What are we gonna see coming out of the National Archives that might seem different? And hello, morning Rachel, we have you on screen. So I will come to you in a moment as well. But Rachel, just because I know you've been dipping in and out, I was just asking Andrea what she wanted to achieve in an ideal world. So I'll come to you and ask you that in a moment, but I was just asking Andrea what she's going to kind of start with, because she's outlined her vision of a much more inclusive representative National Archives with co-creation and so on. And I was just asking her because it's quite a big vision, what she's going to start with. So over to you Andrea, and then I'll come back to you Rachel. A few things. So one of the key things is actually the head of diversity, equity and inclusion now in post, which I'm absolutely thrilled for. And few other things that we're doing. We are undertaking a culture program at the moment and becoming an inclusive archive is a critical part of that. So we're really pulling together people's thoughts on what it would mean for us to be more inclusive. And what we will be doing is creating a behavior framework that then sits behind everything we do. So at least everyone has a sense of how we want to interact and what's really important to us. We then are looking at our visual identity. So I've been having conversations with various people across the organization to really challenge us in terms of how we represent ourselves, both in the written word and in our visuals. So that we continually improve and strengthen our ability to be reflective of the not so comfortable areas of our past as well as the areas that people are quite rightly proud of. There's always two sides to every story. And I think that's one thing that we're really looking at is making sure that as many perspectives are included as possible. So that's where we're starting. In terms of as an organization, I mean, Rachel has been doing some fabulous work. I know with the sector as part of the archive sector development team. So there's a load of work that Rachel's been doing that people will see. So a lot of the work that I'm doing is very much behind the scenes, apart from the visual identity. And Rachel is going to, I think, be doing a lot of that work. So I'm going to hand over to Rachel because it seems the perfect time to bring Rachel in to talk about what the sector might see from us coming forward. Perfect. Rachel. So am I answering to what do we want to achieve in this ideal world or from the sector perspective, just to clarify? For me, it's talking about what you'd want to achieve and what we might see from TNA. How would we know that? What are we going to see that's different? Well, I'm really interested in understanding how we can pursue inclusion from our unique selling point as a National Archives. And I think one of the key ways that we can do that is that we foster culture where we are a site where people come to understand each other better. And so that means that people feel that they can come as employees into the organization and bring their whole selves and as visitors and bring their whole selves without feeling the need to mask maybe differences to meet societal expectations where we're all practicing kindness and generosity in our interactions as our default. And that where everyone, regardless of their kind of culture, can find authentic and interesting representations about themselves in history. And so they can see and understand their place in making history and projecting to the future what they want and be aspirational. Because I think at the moment what we have is an imbalance in who feels that they can use the archive in this way that creates aspirations for the future where they see themselves as powerful agents in change where they are listened to and well represented and valued. So the change I'd want people to see is actually more how I want people to feel. To feel ownership of the space, feel able to be loud and interact and engage with us and know that we welcome that and we want to have conversations and that we're excited to be challenged because we want to learn about ourselves, we want to learn about other people, we're really genuinely curious and we're encouraging curiosity. That's absolutely inspirational. So wow, I'm blown away by that answer and amazing answer. Thank you, Rachel. I want to pick up now on an unusual word in actually Rachel in your job title. So just to remind everybody, Rachel's new role is head of diversity, equity and inclusion. I know Andrea's told me that a couple of people thought that was a spelling mistake. And so for someone you've left the A in the L out, shouldn't it be equality? And it shouldn't have been equity. It was right. It was not supposed to be equality at all. So Andrea, I'm going to come to you first and then to Rachel to ask, obviously I know it was a conscious choice, so I don't need to ask you that, but what did you want to signal with that, with that very specific choice of wording? Yes, I think it definitely surprised a few people. So sending an email to say, no, it wasn't a typo was quite a humorous moment for me. And I think, you know, I've had this in various organizations that there's been a focus on equality and that has led people to want to treat everybody the same. And actually by doing so, it perpetuates some of the disadvantages that certain people have in that kind of system. So if you, there's a wonderful image of three children looking at a sports game and one is able to see over the fence because they're quite tall. Another, sorry, they are on blocks. So the first one is on one block and can see over the fence. The next one is also on one block, but can't see over the fence because they're not tall enough. So actually in order for the person to have equal opportunity to see the game in front of them, they need two blocks to be able to see over the fence. And that's what equity is about. It's about actually focusing on the outcome, which is equality of opportunity rather than treating everybody the same. And in order to ensure that people have equality of opportunity, you need equity. So you need to look at how do you level the playing field? What do you need to put in place to enable people to join in and have those opportunities that they wouldn't normally do? And as a system in terms of an organization, it's then looking at what are the things that we do as an organization that means there's a fence there in the first place. So how can we actually dismantle some of the systems and structures that we have within an organization that prevents people from just being their authentic selves which Rachel beautifully described in terms of bringing their whole selves to the National Archives and to society as a whole because there are so many people who feel that they need to mask not just when they come here but actually in society. So there's a kind of a, I would love society to replicate what Rachel was talking about rather than just the National Archives. Thank you. That's a lovely analogy. I really like that one. I should be remembering that one because I think it illustrates a number of points in a really nuanced way in a really effective way. So thanks for that. It's really interesting. I'm going to come back to the equity bubble. I just want to flip over to Rachel and ask her about the equity word. And did you notice it when you applied that it was not equal? I said that it was equity. And what does that mean to you? And how do you think it's going to change or will it change the way you kind of operate in the role? What are your thoughts on the kind of equity word? I was very excited. I know equity is in the context of inclusion. I know a lot of people are familiar with the word from finance and thought it was about investment. But the reality is that inclusion works is needed because there's exclusive practices and exclusive realities. Equality work is needed because there's inequality. Diversity work is needed because there is a lack of diversity. And so whilst we are very much focused on the positive and the outcome, the action we want to enact, a lot of the access questions, accessibility actions we're doing are because there is a barrier that we really need to see and focus on. And in this work, equality is the end game. We're looking for an equal society. But you don't start the journey at the destination. And if we just try to put equality in now, as Andrea said, some people end up getting more than they need to meet their needs. And some people won't get enough to meet that same need. And equity is about understanding that there is a history of inequality that needs to be rectified before the balance sheet is equal enough that people can flourish inequality. There are other principles that influence this work, and some of them are justice principles. And like Andrea said, that's about thinking about what is that barrier in the first place before we need to equip everybody with tools to overcome the barrier. Maybe we can remove the barrier. But equity as a focus means that we are exploring this through the questions of what is the reality that's come before us? What is the need now? And then we're on our journey to equality, but we're not pretending we're closer to the endpoint than we are. We're aware that this is a big undertaking that will require a lot of thought and a lot of energy and a lot of participation from people and listening to real needs. So yeah, that's what equity means to me in the situation of equality. Right, really, really interesting. Can I just remind people if you do wish me to ask anything of Andrea and Rachel on your behalf, please do post it in the Q&A. I'm keeping my eyes open. So there's an opportunity there for you to ask your own questions. In the meantime, I want to stick with the equity word for the moment and go back to Andrea. And you were talking about how it meant a kind of different approach because obviously people have different needs as Rachel's also described. So how is that going to kind of work in practice? Does it mean you'll be kind of not exactly targeting, but kind of putting together sort of programs or initiatives that speak to a particular community, those with perhaps socioeconomic challenges, people with different abilities, people with challenges of all sorts. Obviously there are all sorts of communities that as Rachel and you have both described face different challenges, different barriers, different fences. How is that going to work in practice addressing all those communities? Because it can, obviously there's intersectionality between different communities and different challenges. So it's quite a complex field. How are you going to make that work? I think it's a very admirable thing. I'm just wondering how it's going to work in practice without becoming possibly incomplicated. I think I'll pick up some of the words that Rachel has just used. And that is about understanding the barrier. So one of the first things we need to understand is why there isn't the representation, what stops people either progressing or being attracted to us in the first place. We're trying all sorts of different ways of looking at recruitment. So for example, looking at the language we use when we go out to recruit and making sure that it is mutually gendered or dare I say it's slightly feminine because actually loads of research says that actually that doesn't influence our male colleagues applying. So it's just looking at the balance of the words that we use and how we represent. And also the barriers that we put in an advert in the first place. So really testing hiring managers in terms of do they really need those academic qualifications? And how do we ensure that actually people with lived experience feel as able to have a voice in our work as people with high academic qualifications? And that's not to downplay those at all but it's to look at whether there's a way of having both of those in play because actually the intersection between lived experience and academic is really interesting and brings a richness. So it's looking at things like that and looking at the barriers. So barriers for example, where you think that something is a really good idea but actually when you look into it, it's not. So there's been a lot of talk about four day week and people actually working their five days in four. Well that's great if you don't have children, you don't have caring responsibilities etc. So again it's something that sounds great and is really in vogue but actually has some really unintended consequences and it's making sure that you're constantly thinking about that and really challenging how you're doing things to be more inclusive. You'll never be fully inclusive. This is a journey. This is something that all of us will need to continually consciously have as part of our everyday working and I will shut up. I will get off on a roll. Get on a roll. We like rolls. See what you think. Before I invite you, that was quite interesting because for those of you on the call who were there too, I chaired one of the key notes yesterday around lunchtime with Regina Everett and Alec Ward and Josie Fraser talking about digital skills and that issue about someone asked a question about what about this kind of privileged role of professional qualification. Should we still demand those and Regina said obviously there are some things where if you need to code Python you need to be able to do it but there are loads of other areas where people started to bring in and I think it was Alec talked about his shift in not having qualifications and building on formal, sorry I don't want to downgrade his experience but he was using his lived experience and his work experience as well as qualifications and Josie was also commenting on how that's changing that context where people are much more willing rightly to kind of take into consideration all the skills people have built up during their working life and I came into the conversation at that point because we were talking about the need for a piece of paper so all of the three around the table were talking about leading and creating digital skills courses and programs and not the problem but a challenge can be people often need something like I have done this course or I have got this diploma or certificate something they can take away because otherwise it can be in a sort of very formal traditional CV kind of recruitment thing. People want a certificate or they want a piece of paper and it can be difficult to demonstrate those skills and those experiences that you've built up over your career and I can see Andrew waving like crazy trying to come in on that point so I will go to Andrea before once it's blown to frustration and then we will come to you Rachel, Andrea I clearly want to say something about that. I do and I think this is one of those areas where I would say we need to be more challenging of ourselves because actually there's a whole host of things we can do at interview so if you change the way we interview you change the outcome so you can actually do tasks and you can get people to do those codings and actually they can show you what they can do they don't need that piece of paper so there's a whole host of things that we can do we're just going to be brave enough to kind of say okay we're going to do something a bit different to hire to Rachel's role we did something really different we did have no CVs so we have absolutely no CVs it was all done on work based questions to really get their thinking about and their experience but in a way that actually also reflected the role and I think we've got a really great great outcome as a result of that that might not have happened if we'd done it in a more traditional way because people might not have applied had it been done in a more traditional way so I just had to come in on that That's fine so Rachel can I also say two things one I'd be quite interested to hear about your experience on the other side of that a very non-traditional approach and how it felt as a candidate but also if you have any other thoughts about what we're talking about anyway about recruitment skills how you demonstrate skills that kind of things over to you Yeah I mean it was I found it actually quite fun application to do which is a weird thing to say but the questions were very much how would you deal with and this is a scenario and in this role you would be asked to do that and it was very revealing of what the job would be which was really interesting for me because it's a new role and it's difficult to imagine what the responsibilities are going to be and where it's going to sit and what the focuses are imagined so that was really insightful as an applicant to see with the scenarios and then it was great to be able to to showcase what my values were not just what my experience had been so I could say that I would approach this because these were my values and this is the approach I would take based on what I want to learn and what I know and what I want to share so that was from the other side that was good and it was short I didn't have to find out the dates of when I did my GCSEs or you know go back through my qualifications in that way and sometimes I guess I have certain concerns as somebody with multiple marginalized identities that some of my identities might be used against me unconsciously and because who I was in terms of my age and my gender and all of those things didn't come into play into how I answered those questions I could feel quite confident that if that was going to be held against me it would be held against me at a later stage but I didn't so it felt great because I could just showcase my ambitions and my desires in that the in terms of the recruitment question for wider inclusion I think having worked with the sector for a while and worked in the heritage sector in general for a longer I know that one of the a focus point in diversity in terms of inclusion is often entry points into the sector but unfortunately we don't tend to focus on the retention and the the investment going forward and so we get a lot of drop off and we get a lot of people who come into the sector really ambitious and excited on these kind of schemes who find that they really quickly reach a block where the progression is difficult or they have to retrain and so the barriers that weren't there to start to get into the sector are absolutely there at the next level up and so I would love for us to focus more on the sort of what are transferable skills what can someone bring in in mid-level and senior level that might not be might not be achieved if someone came through the linear approach and had the the same archive having the archiving MA and then had archiving experience and then managed an archive actually what can somebody who could manage an archive but has doesn't have those skills below could they offer and what could they offer in terms of inclusive and diverse environment and then I know in the wider sector there's a lot of conversations within this moment of economic insecurity about how to talk about our skills as transferable how to kind of present what we do as valuable in multiple sectors and that includes understanding what we do as something that can be transferred in as well as something that can be transferred out so I think it'd be really exciting for us to open up that debate and think about our jobs in the sector beyond the qualification and actually the skills and it will help with that kind of investment because it also give people more feel more equipped to have more roots up even if we don't have maybe the the obvious kind of progression routes available if it's like a small archive or if there's not enough money to create any job I was really encouraged in the conversation that you chaired yesterday about that idea about how people really thrive when they're invested in even if you have the risk of losing the people you invest in actually you're creating an environment that more people are attracted to more opportunities for people behind and that person feeling as though they have more possibilities for the future which is really something invaluable Rachel I'm going to stick with you because you talked quite a lot about the sectors I wanted to ask the two of you, I'll start with you Rachel since you've got the microphone because obviously archives cultural heritage academia do have particular challenges in representation from from some communities which is very very low and what do you think the particular issues are for the kind of broader cultural heritage sector in terms of kind of diversity, equity and inclusion I think there are a lot of problems that are symptomatic of societal problems and mirror that but for the idea of the unique selling point of heritage organizations it tends to be our collections and how we use them and for a lot of marginalized identities what that means is that a lot of the collections we own are either about the historical oppression of those marginalized communities but from the voice of those who oppressed rather than the voice of the people who fought for their own equality and freedom and then the ones that we do have which have the voice and agency to people who are marginalized or discriminated against they're not that discoverable, there's low confidence in how we will deal with these collections so they're not being used to their potential and so that idea of people feeling attracted to the sector because they love history, they feel excited about it, they feel they see themselves in it, they want to contribute to it, manage it you can have that from a diverse perspective about things that are not to do with your identity but it helps to have things that feel familiar to draw certain people in and it hurts if you are from a marginalized community to only see either bad representation or no representation so one of the things we do have to work on is how do we deal with the collections that we have, how do we make them richer, how do we make them more discoverable, how to engage people in kind of the use of them because I think that will help raise the confidence of us using them more and I see this happening a lot in the sector the sector has actually been doing a great deal since the pandemic in terms of I think as horrible as the pandemic has been and continues to be it did provide a lot of opportunities for certain organizations that had the resources to do this, to pause think about what was important to them and to start to do that deep dive research that requires that time energy and thought so I do think that in the next couple of years we are going to start seeing the impact of that but I think it needs to grow with momentum rather than slow down because we are returning to a version of events that are ways of working that is not compatible with that slow thinking and that development and that consultation so yeah, those are my initial thoughts. Thanks, before I come to Andrew I'm going to draw, we've had a question from Ian which is kind of relevant to this discussion so we're going to draw that in and thanks very much to the question Ian, so Ian is saying it's great to hear Andrea saying that she welcomes diverse opinions and he's been campaigning about inclusion in archives for a long time, I've got a paraphrase because it's quite a long question and I know we're a bit tight on time but finding that parts of the Glam community have very entrenched positions which they're perhaps unwilling to consider because there's a piece about using particular language whether someone think how someone addresses things like identity politics theory of privilege and so on so and Ian said he's finding viewpoints immediately get shut down so he wanted to ask how Andrea and Rachel you're going to ensure that the issues are properly considered and discussed so that people have a forum to talk about issues which can be incredibly contentious, incredibly sensitive and where are the forms for where such discussions can take place, I mean talking here about the archives profession but obviously this is going to apply across the piece to libraries, museums, academia as well and I wonder if you could kind of have a go at drawing that one into the discussion as well Andrea I'll go for it for you first it's a really interesting question and one that is quite challenging from my previous role this was something we discussed a lot actually and that was in the charity sector and from my experience it is about the two words that Rachel used in her wonderfully inspiring ideal world and they are kindness and generosity because actually we need to meet people where they are we need to understand their viewpoints and by doing so we become richer ourselves so rather than shutting down a viewpoint that is counter to your own actually the other word Rachel used which I absolutely love is curious be curious about what their viewpoint is and how it might actually shape your own so because that's the way we learn we learn through experimentation we learn by stretching ourselves and there are lots of different perspectives and they are that they are someone's perspective and it's important that you recognise that and that that forms part of the conversation and I would love more forums to be like that where you're not you don't feel you have to justify your opinion and instead of people there's a wonderful phrase to understand before seeking to be understood and actually to go into those conversations seeking to understand the point of view rather than to defend your own easier said than done in a lot of these cases because actually the flip side of that is understanding that the people that you are interacting with may be personal may be personally impacted by what you're saying so it is also about when you have an opinion is about also with kindness and generosity really thinking about how that might impact the individual that you are having that conversation with because there's plenty of times where I think these conversations do happen but they happen in a way that's not with generosity and it's not with the thought of the other person so for I'll give an example because it's often better when you have an example in my last organization we were talking about some of the issues with some of the communities and the deprivation that they were facing in a particular humanitarian context and the way that people were talking was from a very practical basis but actually in the room there were a number of people whose heritage was from those places and that wasn't recognized, acknowledged appreciated and they weren't brought into the conversation so I think it's about being more mindful in conversations and for us and we're looking at getting we have an EDI forum but we're also looking at how we can ensure that all of the different networks that we have within the organization because we're fortunate in our size to have a number of the networks that actually we bring them together and have a holistic conversation that bring all of these points together so that voices aren't excluded because it's quite easy to exclude voices that you don't agree with and actually you're poorer as a result I hope that kind of answers the question in Rachel. Yeah I'd like to add into that I think a part of for me what's the kind of grounding of this kind of question is this idea of safe spaces and I don't agree that safe spaces are possible necessarily because you can't be safe for everybody but I think the idea of safe spaces is around creating parameters for why people have gathered together so in terms of the advice we have to give to the sector it's generally something that we have to be really bespoke about because everybody's context is different and I think that's the same thing for conversations I think every conversation is different but as long as you are transparent about what you're doing and you act with intention and you're transparent about what those intentions are it helps a lot so if you want to create a space where people can debate openly, unafraid of kind of getting the language wrong then create that space, invite people to join I do these things called collective learning experiences where I invite people to come and I tend to use the faith and belief forum safe space guidance in which they give you kind of some guidance of how we want to be in communication together and that's be generous and assume generosity and good intentions and speak only from your own experience rather than generalizing say like all men when you're just one man and you can only speak from one point of view for example and those are really useful in terms of having people know why they're entering the conversation and be aware of that you still have to be mindful that things you can't control the situation and people's emotions are people's emotions but if you have come to a conversation to have an intellectual debate and someone else has come to a conversation because they want trauma healing you're going to have a different conversation and you're going to have different experiences of that conversation so it's important to know why you're coming together and then operate within that so be respectful if you want to talk about things like white privilege as a person of color with the white person or vice versa if you want to have that as an intellectual debate you set that up to kind of discuss you know the barriers of is race real is what is privileged is it just delineated against or racialized experiences or at what point do we need to think of things really intersectionally like does white privilege exist within low socioeconomic backgrounds does it exist outside of a white dominant society that's an intellectual debate someone else saying that I didn't get a job because somebody looked at racialized me as a person of color and this was really painful and I want to talk about how white privilege might have been affecting my ability to get the thing I want that person is not there to have an intellectual debate that person wants to talk about their experiences and see whether or not first they can get some kindness and some acknowledgement of their pain and then they can have a discussion about you know maybe other factors might be involved or is this really a question about racial discrimination and a complex one of that because white privilege is very complex it sits within conversations around colorism and other kind of debates that are intersectional and it's not something that is easily understood and brought back down to the word itself is that the title can be inflammatory because people hear privilege and they hear whiteness so they hear racialization and they hear privilege and these are two very emotive things that are complicated and so we're trying to understand it and we're trying and we're feeling it and those are two different experiences Thanks very much great answers and a great question thanks Ian even for that one both of you described kind of initiatives that the National Archives can take forward and obviously the National Archives is quite big particularly in the cultural heritage sector is about 500-600 staff and obviously loads of museums, libraries archives are quite tiny they might even have one person so what creative things, the theme is inclusive innovation here so we need to be innovative if you're a person banned in an institution or there are two of you what can you do in those really tight resource situations where you really want to make a difference and you do want to initiate some of these discussions or increase your representation or whatever it is what can you do in some of these really tiny cultural heritage institutions for those where there's tight resources in terms of finance in terms of you know even at a basic level if there's only one person in the organisation and that's a white person then you're a 100% white organisation so what can you do creatively if you're in a small institution to really engage and to really address some of these things in what can be quite a challenging situation in lots of ways I'm going to go to you Rachel first on that one and then I'll come back to Andrea Well I think creative is a really good lens to put on that because first of all you don't need to be alone it can feel like you've got the if you're a lone worker or you're an entirely volunteer led organisation it can feel like you are tackling this entirely alone first of all just a plug to say Archive Sector Development team offer an amazing amount of resource and support to the sector and if you feel alone contact the team and somebody will help you and help engage with these debates that can really get you going dip into the networks within the sector as well maybe it can be communities of thinking and practice maybe it's networks of similar archives but these can really bolster and strengthen each other, peer networks are not just for working with people who are on traineeships we all have peer networks and we should tap into them because they are strengths but if you are alone or have very little budget but you really want to embed consultation then you should it's important to think about what is that exchange if your exchange is not something that you can really rely on as financial exchange you can't pay people properly for their time and you get quite embarrassed about this question of financial exchange and kind of thinking about power and you can't loop into all of the all of the trippings of the of this really complicated well-intentioned practice that we're all quite I think we all have good intentions to take part in worried about the the accidental replication of oppressive practices I think it's just important to think about what is participation so participation is sort of you taking part in something and you're giving part of something it is actually an exchange so you're giving something, some knowledge your time, your energy and what are you taking if you can't exchange money for people's engagement what can you exchange work experience, can you discuss with them what it is that they want, that big ideal that you actually discuss with people what it is that they want to get out of it and see if you can meet that within the realities of your your barriers and if you can't, can you work with other people, can you think about a community partner, can you be more creative around businesses locally and maybe people want a platform, can you share your platform is it that you can reach more people think creatively about what you can offer as an exchange, that's not monetary if you don't have that and that's within your resource and your gift to give and it's really important when you think about consultation and working with other groups of people that you have this conversation first why are you doing it, what's your motivation for being involved and getting other people involved make sure that's solid and that has kind of robust values and morals behind it you're not just there to extract information from somebody but then also what are you able to actually do, so are you consulting people on something that they actually have the power to change or not, because don't do that, don't engage people in kind of a consultive process where they actually don't have any say and it's just a veneer so make sure they have power and you've established what it is that these people are involved in what does they want to get out of it and how you can exchange something transparently and with intention I'm always going to come back to that and when things bespoke you decide intentionally what your actions are going to be and you're transparent about it from the start that's great, sorry I'm just scribbling some of that down to think it's really inspiring and I think I really like the idea of an exchange particularly as you said if you're a small institution and you can't afford to pay people that exchange I really like that idea I think it's great, Andrea do you want to come in on that at all perfect answer and Rachel has been working with the sector for some time and knows it far better than I do and I think very eloquently said what I've got written down in terms of what I've been thinking so nothing to add which because I will thank you very much I want to pick up on something that I'd be quite interested in asking so obviously we know across the sector archives, libraries, museums there is a very very low representation of lots of communities but also in terms of all sorts of other communities as well disabilities LGBTQ plus lots of other communities but obviously that can be a real issue so how do we attract staff to a sector where they don't see themselves represented you talked about this earlier Rachel about being able to bring your authentic self to work in a safe place and if you're the only person from your community that can be quite tough or even if it's one of a really small number there are all sorts of challenges that that brings so if institutions genuinely want to increase their diversity and you genuinely want to work for that institution but you think wow I'm going to be the only person from my community or one of a very small number that brings all sorts of challenges loads of emotional labour people can you know if we want to be diverse if you're for example a person of colour people kind of want you to do all the work about that you know tell us what to do about this there can be a lot of emotional load a lot of pressure on people how do we break through those good intentions but that kind of almost zero diversity a very low diversity to a broader diversity without putting a huge unbearable load on those pioneers who join the institution first from any particular community Rachel can I come to you first on that one Sure the main thing I would say is that there is an uneven expectation on people from marginalised communities to represent larger communities and the reality of representation is you can only represent people who have nominated you to represent them I could not for example represent my sister because she and I are very different but on paper we're the same close to the same age we've got the same parents but she would not she's not nominated me to speak on her behalf and I definitely can't represent her perspective so we need to make sure that we're mindful that we're not asking people to represent a larger group of people that they may not feel equipped to represent want to represent and haven't actually been given the authority to represent second of all I think something that I needed to learn being put in these situations was how to say no and I would encourage people who are joining these organisations as pioneers to be really confident in the fact that you can say that is outside of my experience that is outside of my comfort zone I would rather join you in the learning than be an educator because at that point you step back and you're allowing yourself to it can feel easy to provide solutions when you know instinctively what you think the answer is because of your lived experience of sustainable growth for an organisation empowering other people to find the solutions is actually what would embed change so whilst it might feel like the right thing to do to solve the problem to be a quick win you can agree to be at the table and join the conversation without leading the conversation and that can help a lot in the future going forward in your own position your tendencies burn out comes quite high with people who off the solution as a person with that insight in using lived experience which is a different emotional toil than using intellectual experience because often some of this is linked to trauma and it's very difficult to operate when you're recalling trauma there's some interesting books around how trauma actually is embodied and I would encourage us all to think more about trauma informed practice especially since we've all gone through a collective trauma recently with the pandemic so that would be my advice and so people asking the questions to be mindful of that like are you extracting information you could be curious that's very good but is that person a willing participant have you asked their consent to be participating based on their lived experience because maybe they want to participate based on their interests maybe they are the person from a racially diverse background and if you wanted to get them involved you engage them in a conversation about admitting and they really add value to that conversation about the thing that they're passionate about but maybe they too have gone through an experience of being a minority most of their life and are not really equipped to think about their own racial identity because they're in survival mode so it's important that people are willing participants when they're using their lived experience and that we are encouraged to join the conversation rather than lead that's brilliant Andrea conscious of time and another question has come in so I'm not going to ask you to comment on that apologies because we are running very tight on time but Graham has put a question in he said he's joined late so sorry if he's missed this and we did talk Graham a little bit about recruitment earlier so do catch up with the recording which will be available in a couple of days time but he's asked does TNA have any plans to make recruitment more inclusive and he's particularly interested in neurodiversity but obviously said it can apply to other EDI areas so how do you plan to do that so I'm going to push that one to you Andrea and thanks very much Graham for the questions we've got about two minutes Andrea so speak quickly I promise I'll be quick get people involved so this is very much what Rachel was talking about is when we were recruiting for example the head of diversity education inclusion all the questions and our approach we went to the different networks in the organisation and the chairs of those networks so they had they were nominated to speak on behalf of so very important that you're talking to the right people and we got them involved they were involved in the peer panel and the kind of discussion that happened with colleagues was then part of the actual decision making and that's the important part is that at each part you need to think about how do I get different perspectives into the conversation and making sure that whatever you're doing isn't putting in more barriers for people that you hadn't really thought about so get nominated people involved because they will tell you and that's what they've signed up to do so embrace that and I know we're very very tight so the last thing that I think it was really important to the level is around peer networks we tend to have peer networks ourselves is if you encourage peer networks if you have a small number of people in your organisation you're then extending your reach and if you actually put that on your websites and you show that you are committed to it then actually you might get a more diverse group of people applying to roles when you have them you've got to be visibly proactive in order to signal that actually people are welcome