Our commitment to diversity and inclusion

Crouch End Festival Chorus aims to be a diverse, inclusive and welcoming organisation in which people from all backgrounds are actively enabled to participate.

Principles

CEFC recognises that, like many classical music groups, we are not representative of the diversity of our local population and we want this to change. this change starts by being aware that there is an issue, understanding barriers and our own prejudices. So, the members of our Management Committee and our Trustees now undertake diversity training and we have a Diversity and Inclusion manager on our Management committee. We also have a Diversity and Inclusion policy which aims to ensure that CEFC takes all reasonable measures to encourage diversity and inclusion, and to eliminate discrimination, supported by an action plan which helps us to take positive steps to becoming a diverse and inclusive organisation.

As such, our principles are aligned with those expressed by the Arts Council:

"We believe arts organisations... should ensure that their work draws on and reflects the full range of backgrounds and perspectives to be found in our society."

Working towards diversity and inclusion

This means we seek to:

engage with and reflect our local community of Haringey/North London
monitor and report regularly progress on diversity and inclusion
provide the committee and Trustees with appropriate guidance, support and training on diversity and inclusion so that decisions and actions take them into account.

Mentoring

To sing with Crouch End Festival Chorus you need a good voice – that is all that matters. We are very keen to attract good singers from a wide variety of backgrounds. We understand that some people with a good voice may not have the experience of singing in a large choir, may not even read music. And we therefore offer a mentoring scheme for new singers in this position.

Outreach

We offer workshops for singers from our local communities. And we offer free tickets to our concerts for people who either could not afford to come or might not think it is for them, such as refugees and asylum seekers. This way we can grow and diversify our audiences and we hope that in time this will lead to a more diverse choir.