31-10-2024
Released at the beginning of 2024, this Manual is the result of in-depth work carried out in collaboration with and in consultation with several associations working on the topic of inclusion and diversity.
Francisca took the time to explain to us how the manual came about, what it contains, and what to look forward to in the future.
Within PERFORMART what challenges in terms of inclusion and accessibility prompted you to create this manual?
The direction always proposes to the members some wider issue of focus for each year of activity. And so in 2021, we proposed inclusion and accessibility as the main focus of 2022.
The members were very enthusiastic about that, and then we immediately proposed to create a manual of inclusive recruitment. The idea came about because some of our members tried to create processes of recruitment that didn’t tackle the problem correctly, and it got the attention of the media. So, we thought it would be good to do something professional and more well-constructed about that. Once we got the approval of our members, we invited 4 specialised associations since we couldn’t do it alone. We needed specific point of views on the topic. Each association is specialised in one topic. Afrolink works on inclusion for African and Afro-descendants, Centro de Vida Independente which focuses on disability and persons with special needs, ILGA Portugal which represents LGBTGIA+ persons, and Access Culture which works on all of these subjects specifically in the cultural sector.
The whole process took about 2 years to be finalised. We started with a specialised survey to collect information about cases of discrimination in the recruitment process. The survey also allowed us to get data on recruitment discrimination. We included these findings in the manual: in each page, there is a reply to one of the cases that were mentioned in the questionnaire. It’s really strong because it makes us realise that it’s not a perfect world, and still nowadays we have cases of incredible insensitivity and people being discriminated against during interviews.
We also tried to go a bit further about the conditions that are needed to have a diverse team. But that’s not a topic we expanded on, so maybe we’ll have more opportunities to work on it in the future.
Now that we have a bit of background on how and why the manual was created, can you tell us more about its content?
The manual starts with an explanation on why it came about, why we felt it was important to address this topic. We have almost 70 institutions and most of the teams are white and composed of people with no disabilities, and introducing the use of pronouns is also difficult for example. So, we felt we were very late in terms of evolution towards more inclusion. The manual explains that the need for diversity is also to reflect our communities, which are more diverse than our teams.
We started from specific cases that happened in our sector in Portugal, either those that made it to the media, or some that were relayed by our members, or from the survey that we circulated.
The second part of the manual tries to explain why we discriminate, even when we’re not conscious about it. And so, we did interview from culture professionals who accepted to talk to us about discrimination. This is also the part that includes the results of our survey.
We also have a chapter about false beliefs, since we sometimes think that a certain behaviour is not discrimination when it is. We have a chapter that’s about the errors that institutions and people make when we talk about diversity and inclusion.
The third part of the manual contains concrete recommendations about what to do to have an inclusive recruitment process. It questions usual practices: why would we need a photo in a curriculum? Why do we ask for the address? Maybe we just need to know if someone is able to work with us. From the announcement to the application, the interview and the working conditions that are provided.
After two years of work, you have now published the manual, what else is in store for PERFORMART on the topic of inclusion and diversity?
The creation of this manual started a conversation with our members: we talk about it during our General Assemblies, now we’re doing the training which allows us to think together. We try to make it as collaborative as possible, and we’re happy we can count on the help of the associations we work with.
We are now doing sessions of training for our members to dive into this topic. We already did two sessions and people were very enthusiastic about it. In the second part of the year, we are going to have another training session for our members, but this one will be more concrete. We’ll focus on how to implement the manual in our organisations, to reach the goals we have set.
We are also now trying to translate the manual into English. We also decided not to print the manual, it only exists in digital version because it is always changing, so we have to be able to update it. It’s available on our website, and since it’s an open resource, many people can read it and can provide advice and feedback to improve it.
We already have updated it since its release because we’ve received concrete recommendations about changing some terms when talking about LGBTQIA+ persons and neurodivergences. We want it to be a living document because the terms are always changing.
As for the future, we’re probably going to continue working on this next year, which would also allow our members to really achieve their goal in this area.