After the events of May 2020 which saw George Floyd murdered by a police officer in Minnesota, the People’s Voice Media team were prompted to examine our own complicity in systemic racism. At the time we were a predominantly ‘white’ organisation, across all of our layers and we could not pretend that we did not have a road to travel.

However, we did not want to make empty gestures that would be quickly forgotten with no lasting impact. Instead, we wanted to have a long-term anti-racism strategy that would enable ourselves and others to hold us accountable. We wanted this to not only align with, but also inform, our overall strategy and vision for the organisation.

This has been a long process over almost three years, beginning with the setting up of a subgroup of our Board to work on the topic, and evolving through education, conversations, and active listening into what will be our Anti-Racism Vision.

Our Vision – which will be published on our website in the very near future – will not be an end point, rather a beginning. It lays out the next two years as a series of milestones for our team and Board members, our organisation, and the sectors in which we work. It recognises that becoming actively anti-racist is an on-going commitment with no final end point. As such, the Vision will be a living document. At the end of two years we expect to have more to add, more to do, keeping anti-racism at the centre of what we do, and at the heart of our goal to create a socially just work.

There is work to do and it is work we are already in the process of undertaking. During the past few years, our team and Board members have:

• Undertaken individual learning on racism as a systemic issue
• Developed a shared understanding that racism is a systemic issue and an issue we need to address on individual and organisational levels

As an organisation we have:

• Established initial relationships with partners who are led by people from communities with lived experience of racism
• Diversified the people who are part of People’s Voice Media in terms of race through changes to our recruitment practices

Within our sectors we have:

• Initiated conversations about systemic racism within those sectors
• Enhanced the racial diversity at events and workshops we host or are a part of

Our Anti Racism Vision will, as mentioned, be published in the near future. For now, if you have any comments, questions or feedback regarding our anti racism work, please do contact us at enquiries@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk.