Following the recent issues highlighting and discussing digital inclusion into events for disabled people, I’m really keen to find out why (in Birmingham at least), that there seems to be a very large portion of event audiences that are predominantly white.
Why do we not see more physical attendance at events from the BME communities that make up our diverse city?
Without having any great knowledge of the subject, I’d wonder whether it comes down to relevance.
We as digitally enabled individuals should be able to communicate to other communities why this stuff is valuable. Without knowing how digital tools can be of use, I think it’s hard to derive relevance.
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I think the inclusion stretches across all the diversity strands, it’s not just BME & disability but its also gender(but that’s slowly changing), sexuality, age etc.
Diversifying how we speak to those groups (community radio, local press etc) but especially where we hold our events will make a change.
Lets go speak to the underrepresented communities & find out why they don’t come along rather than speculate. Lets get face to face with those communities & take on some of the embarrassment at having excluded/put barriers in their way.
At #wxwm2, @parboo opened this debate. Take a listen from back in May 2009
http://www.rhubarbradio.com/audio/wxwm209/Jaki_Booth_Debate.mp3
This conversation was one of the livlier at #WXWM2, but more interesting for me was the high number of women who approached me afterwards saying they had not felt able to really contribute. This comment is often greeted with derision, but is exactly why I support separte space for disadvantaged groups to shar their feelings. In my experience, this always means they gain confidence to promote them to others.
I do find the gender mix in my Social Media world balanced, however the contributions made are sometimes not, indeed many of the women I follow use it to share their perceived failings.
I love this world, I find it very welcoming and well worth taking the plunge and finding your voice. The real beauty is that there is always someone out there who gets life like you do.
The first step is one you’re making – recognising this as a problem. The second is to make some efforts to address it. One good way is to seek out and encourage participation. For example by trying to make sure you have a range of people represented on panels and running sessions at events. Another point here is to find out more about what people can do. For example, disabled people are people and may well be capable of running more than just accessibility sessions :}