We recognise that environmental sustainability needs to be integrated throughout the culture of our organisation, as much as possible we must align what we believe, with what we do – ensuring our ethics, decision-making and actions correspond to reduce our environmental impact and bring about positive environmental change.

We fundamentally believe that our world is facing environmental crises and it is everyone’s responsibility to act. The significance of statistics stating that if our current level of consumption continues, we will require seven more planets, or that the earth’s temperature looks set to increase by more than two degrees leading to catastrophic climate change, can be difficult to grasp. However, these truths (and more) speak of an impending global ecological disaster that we can’t afford to ignore.

Whilst there are some serious questions that must be asked with regards to our current norms of behaviour and habits of consumption and production, we also realise that there are opportunities for change, for alternative narratives/visions to emerge. This may offer new hope and new opportunities for living differently and less extractively with our natural habitat.

We are keen to move these ideas forward and are asking questions about necessary changes that are required on an individual and local, as well as a national and global, level. We are aware that it isn’t only about the obligations we have as an organisation, but also our capacity to reach others, to inform & inspire, and bring about positive environmental change.

The NewBridge Project is committed to embedding equality, diversity and inclusion across all aspects of our organisation, development and programme of activity. We will promote equality & diversity across the workforce, Board and artists we work with, ensure equal opportunities are embedded across our activity and recruitment processes, and endeavour to create an inclusive workforce and environment for all.

The NewBridge Project will treat all people with dignity and respect, valuing the diversity of all. We will promote equality of opportunity and diversity. We will eliminate all forms of direct and indirect discrimination on grounds of race, gender, marital status, caring responsibilities, disability, gender re-assignment, age, social class, sexual orientation, religion/belief, irrelevant offending background or any other factor irrelevant to the purpose in view.

In June 2020, we published a short statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and our commitment to making real and permanent change across our public programme and our organisation, structure and policies.

We recognised then and now that it should not have taken the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer for us to interrogate our complicity in upholding structural racism and our understanding of white supremacy, and that much more needs to be done to affect sector wide change.

Our commitment does not start and end with a series of statements, but is activated through ongoing discussion, learning and anti-racist actions. We are sharing our next steps publicly as starting points for discussion and action with our community, showing our ongoing commitment to actively challenging racism and acknowledging that we need to do more and do better.

Through our public programme we have a commitment to centring discussion, bringing in and listening to different voices and learning together. But we want to be clear that this commitment is across our organisation, in some of the more invisible ways such as with our structure, governance, and culture as an artist-led space.

In our statement from June, we committed to sharing our plans publicly, and below is a list of actions and intentions that we are making in order to dismantle and challenge systemic racism and inequality within our organisation.