Kelburn Arts, as the company behind The Kelburn Garden Party, has always had at the core of our values the desire be a safe and welcoming community. To that end, we have always aimed to be apolitical where appropriate and supportive where needed.
The incredible surge of the Black Lives Matter movement in recent weeks has been an international phenomenon and their message of racial justice and equality for those who have been treated unjustly by a biased system has been incredible to watch.
We at Kelburn arts and, by extension, the Kelburn Garden Party, stand with Black Lives Matter. We support BIPOC individuals and groups who are fighting for change. All people deserve to be treated equally and with dignity.
Kelburn Arts has always been fully committed to pursuing equality in all aspects of programming and employment, including recruitment and promotion, and provides guidance and encouragement to employees at all levels and third parties, such as contractors, to act fairly and prevent discrimination on the grounds of race, age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion or belief, gender or sexual orientation.
We have been proud over the years to give a platform on all of our stages to many BAME/BIPOC artists and performers and we will continue to champion these voices in our events. Indeed we will redouble our efforts to search out and promote these voices from within the local and international community.
We will continue to learn, change, and evolve and we will leverage our privileged position along the way; because Kelburn is a festival that brings people together and that is the most important step on the journey towards cultivating empathy, which leads to transformative change.
We ask our community to join us in creating space for discourse, hosting events, protests, and open conversations around this topic. If you would like to discuss this with us, please reach out to the Kelburn Team here. We invite applications to perform, volunteer or create at the festival – more information on this can be found here.
