As a learning organisation, we are committed to striving for excellence in all that we do. We will consistently reflect and evaluate how we can improve our practices and systems to support all who work with us.

We actively engage in steering groups and alliances; acknowledging our privilege and taking our responsibility to influence change seriously. Our memberships include – VONNE, Arts Marketing Association, North East & North Cumbria VCSE Sub-Group, North East Institute of Business Ethics, Northumberland Local Cultural Education Partnership, Northumberland Employability Forum, North of Tyne Good Work Pledge, Art Works Alliance, Connecting Culture Northumberland, and North East Youth Alliance.

For 2024, we pledge to:

• Create a “Partner Guide” – which outlines our approach to access and inclusion and what we expect our project partners and venues to have in place.
• Achieve our Better Health At Work and Disability Ready Employer accreditations.
• Launch our (working title) “Braver Spaces” policy.
• Launch a language guide for staff and our Mortal Fools community, outlining inclusive Mortal Fools terminology, so staff feel more confident in their language choices.
• Revisit our EDI strategy and draft a new strategy for 2024 onwards, as we have achieved what we set out to do over the last few years.

Note: we have separated the below into sections, but we recognise that this doesn’t account for intersectionality.

With Young People

We are a social change company, actively fighting to improve children and young people’s lives and to improve their futures.

We scaffold safe and active environments where young people aged 7-19 explore their own lives and the wider world through drama and theatre. We co-create dynamic, thought-provoking, original, socially-engaged theatre, alongside professional theatre artists, with the young people's ideas, emotions, voices, and experiences at the heart.

Our recent productions have explored identity, home, growing up in a rural landscape, mental health struggles, queerness, pressures of social media, the UK education system, the influence of relationships and friendships on young people’s lives, the development of the teenage brain, and what it’s like growing up in the here and now.
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Our productions and projects platform and amplify young people’s voices, experiences, and intersectional needs - with the intention of creatively communicating the social change that young people want to see to the decision makers empowered to make it happen. We also use the insights gained from our rich and meaningful relationships with young people to advocate on young people’s behalf, in decision making spaces from which they are excluded.

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Anti-Racism

We denounce racism, discrimination, and inequality in all its forms.

We operate as an anti-discrimination organisation, committed to eradicating all forms of discrimination from all areas of our operations. To support this, we utilise critical friends, mystery shopper-style feedback, and specialist training -  and are open to continual feedback, learning, and growth.

We believe that diversity strengthens and enriches us, and that it is the responsibility of all arts organisations to make the arts and cultural sector a more diverse and equitable place.

Whilst we cannot undo pain and neglect, we are calling on everyone in the arts, cultural, and heritage sectors - professional and voluntary - to work together to address racism and its deep roots. We must listen, have conversations, and, most importantly, act. We know that we need to do better, and that our entire Mortal Fools community is part of the solution.

We want to tackle racism together by sharing better understanding and practices. We stand united to bring about change in our thinking and actions, and ask you to stand with us.

You can find Anti-Racism resources here.

You can find resources for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement here.

You can find Show Racism The Red Card resources here.

We pledge to continue to:

• Embrace the principle of 'calling in, instead of calling out', which we learnt from Talawa Theatre Company. 'Calling out' assumes the worst. 'Calling in' involves conversation, compassion, and context.
• Acknowledge our privilege and biases as an organisation with a white core team and board of trustees. As an activist organisation, we seek to use our privilege to make space for others and to support and amplify unheard or ignored voices.
• Make time to talk to artists, theatre makers, audiences, participants, and friends from the global majority about what belonging and racial equity looks like within their lives and work, and how we can support that.
• Hold spaces for young people and our Mortal Fools community to talk about racism and to challenge it.
• Work with project partners - including Company Three, Beyond Face Theatre Company, and Prime Theatre Company - to challenge our practices and unconscious bias.
• Work with more black artists and theatre professionals on a freelance and partnership basis - through existing opportunities and developing new ones.
• Continue to organise and facilitate our staff to attend anti-racism, unconscious bias, and inclusivity training. If you’re an organisation looking for training in this area, we encourage you to reach out to Charity So White, Talawa Theatre Company, and Show Racism The Red Card.

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Accessibility and Inclusion

We hold spaces which support and encourage everyone to be their authentic, imperfect selves - with individual strengths, vulnerabilities, lived experiences, emotions, and needs. We recognise, respect, and embrace our differences; understanding that this makes us all stronger, more empathetic, and wiser.

​We strive to meet the needs of everyone we work with; making sure that our company is welcoming and inclusive to people from all walks of life. We create environments and hold brave spaces that are
genuinely supportive and accessible - where everyone feels valued as an individual and is enabled to contribute.

We are committed to removing barriers for artists, participants, and audience members who identify as disabled and/or living with long-term health conditions.

If you’re looking for training and resources, we recommend –

Curious Arts LGBTQIA+ Awareness Training for Cultural Organisations

Arts Marketing Association – Inclusivity & Audiences Day 2024

Little Cog - Disability & Accessibility Resources

The Neurodiverse Museum

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For staff, we:

• Are committed to maintaining a workplace and environment which promotes and supports good physical and mental health and wellbeing for all. Positively contributing to the mental health and wellbeing of our beneficiaries forms part of our core objectives as a charity. We cannot do this effectively without utilising the same practices in our workplace. You can download and read our Mortal Fools Health & Wellbeing policy HERE.
• Ask all staff members to complete an access and inclusion statement as part of their induction process, stating their needs, key identity criteria, and working preferences. This information is used to provide support, equipment, and cross-organisational working practices to best enable everyone to thrive at work. This is reviewed in line management meetings.
• Create staff profiles during our induction process, where key information about preferences, needs, and strengths are highlighted and display in the office.
• Have a Working Culture Guide, structured using the PERMA™ Framework for mental wellbeing, which all staff receive training in, and which sets out the expectations for how we each contribute to cultivating positive working culture.  
• Provide all Mortal Fools staff with an Employee Handbook, which outlines our approach and policies relating to access and inclusion.
  
  

On an organisational level, we:

• Seek to work with those who also value authenticity, openness, continuous learning, and meaningful inclusion.
• Regularly hold space in our team meetings, project meetings, and partner meetings to share learning.
• Continue to ensure staff engage with training opportunities connect to different lived experience, inclusivity, and improving our practice.
• Prioritise audience experiences and inclusion across all levels of our work.
• Use the approach of “have we explained that clearly?” instead of "does that make sense?". We believe it’s our responsibility to communicate clearly and transparently, as opposed to placing the responsibility on others to interpret what we say.
• Strive to work with a wide range of artists, theatre companies, and organisations that match our values and represent a range of lived experiences and intersectional needs.
• Enable folks to be their best authentic self, by providing access support, offering flexible working, and creating regular opportunities for folks to share what they need.
• Check in with our staff, board, artists, beneficiaries, partners, and the wider Mortal Fools community regularly. We invest in building meaningful relationships and open and honest lines of communication, so folks can connect and engage with us on their terms.
• Provide opportunities for our practitioners and young people to experience creative work made by others; to engage with other organisations and learn from them. We also hold space to reflect upon that learning and to share it with others, to feed into our constant evolution.
• Invite critical friends with lived experience to attend our events, experience our activities, consume our content, and read strategic documents - to gain feedback that we can meaningfully respond to.
• Provide regular opportunities for folks to share their personal pronouns and needs if they wish to.
• Only work in accessible venues (near good transport links and wheelchair accessible). We are currently developing a Mortal Fools Partner Pack to support this, which will clearly outline what we need to have in place to hold accessible spaces.
• Are a member of #WeShallNotBeRemoved - an intersectional UK Disability Arts Alliance formed as an emergency response to the pandemic. It’s a forum to advocate, to campaign, and support D/deaf, neurodivergent, and disabled creative practitioners and organisations.

​In all of our activities, we:

• Seek to demystify what happens in theatre, our projects, and our spaces. We do this by using clear non-arts language, providing “what to expect” style resources, and clear accessibility guidance.
• Ensure our Mortal Fools facilitators are experienced in holding safe and brave spaces, that are responsive to intersectional needs and support folks to be themselves and engage. We provide pictures and some information about Mortal Fools facilitators ahead of participants joining our groups or attending our workshops.
• Proactively ask about accessibility requirements and provide space for folks to meaningfully share them.
• Organise training and facilitate our staff attending training, to ensure we are at the forefront of accessibility and inclusion learning & best practice.
• Provide resources in a range of formats.
• Have a digital strand of some form in each project. We recognise that true inclusion means meeting people where they are and not assuming that the end goal is to join us in a physical space. Consequently, we continue our thriving Mortal Fools Online Youth Theatre, hold engaging online spaces, and invest in the creation of digital creative outputs for our digital Mortal Fools community.
• Provide information to those attending our in-person events and performances in advance, to ensure people feel comfortable and aware of what to expect. This includes accessibility information, content themes, sensory information, travel information, and support available.
• Ensure that all Mortal Fools events and performances are relaxed, and that folks know they are welcome to come and go as they need to.
• Are working towards incorporating audio descriptions in 2024.
• Open the event space 15 minutes in advance, so folks can see the space, get comfortable, and touch the set.
• Have multiple wheelchair spaces available at our performances and events.
• Provide a carer/companion ticket for folks that need one.
• Ensure our touring schedules include one performance which is BSL interpreted, and that scripts are always available in advance. Our ambition is to bolster this provision in future.
• Ensure that all of our digital content is captioned, framed appropriately, and (where appropriate) provide downloadable resources to support people to engage with the content and related discussions in various youth settings.

When recruiting, we:

• Have publicly shared our approach to recruitment.
• Issue recruitment information in a range of formats.
• Accept written, audio, and video application formats.
• Clearly explain what we expect to see demonstrated and evidenced in an application.
• Assess all applications anonymously.
• Reply to everyone who applies - providing all applicants with concise, personalised feedback.
• Provide interview questions in advance, to support preparation.
• Provide expenses to attend interviews.
• Provide detailed feedback to all unsuccessful interview candidates.

We are always open to feedback, and we recognise that we are on an accessibility and inclusion journey. We are constantly learning and evolving, and that means that sometimes we may get it wrong or miss something that would be helpful. If you’d like to connect with us, feel free to drop us an email at [email protected].