Anti Racism Statement

We recognise the need to develop an anti-racism strategy and working practice and we are just at the beginning of our work to do so. We want this to be deep, authentic and pro-active rather than performative*, and to involve people from all backgrounds, ethnicities and communities in Brighton & Hove, particularly those affected by racism.

We will continuously listen and learn to improve our strategy and our anti-racism work and accept that this work will take time.

*We recognise that performative allyship – i.e. talking about anti-racism and writing policies without actually changing anything – is ultimately worse than doing nothing.

Safeguarding

• We recognise that visitors, volunteers and staff of colour have lived experience of racism, and the impact of this is trauma. This is likely to affect how they present. We will always consider the race, ethnicity and cultural needs of all who use our services.
• We acknowledge the Adultification of black children, where black girls and boys are inappropriately treated as adults, due to perceptions of them presenting as older than their non-black peers. Our staff and volunteers will always treat black boys and girls as the children they are, regardless of how they present, and follow all our policies for safeguarding children.

Image: This photograph is taken from our ‘Fashion Cities Africa’ exhibition at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, April 2016 – January 2017. To contemporise our historic Africa collections, new material was sourced from Nairobi, Casablanca, Lagos and Johannesburg.

‘Fashion Cities Africa’ was part of our Fashioning Africa project. We worked alongside people of colour from across the city, fashion experts, the Cultural Heritage Network (then called the Black History Group), and Brighton University.