Do you want to work to create more inclusion in your organization, or set up an inclusive literary event? Our tip is to step out of your comfort zone and collaborate with organizations beyond your usual network. To build a bridge to new online and offline target groups, you can engage intermediaries or ambassadors whose practices or ideas may inspire you. For example, open yourself up to other ways of finding new talent and take an active role in them. Need a further impetus? These organizations have blazed a trail.
‘Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.’ Neale Donald Walsch
Black History Month: libraries work towards decolonization
Library Sophia in Schaarbeek is working with five guest curators of colour to screen and decolonize its collection under the heading of Black History Month. They cast a critical eye over the whole of the current collection and make proposals for adjustment. They also ask questions about the role a library plays in spreading knowledge and look at how this particular library can adopt a more inclusive policy in future. A library called Muntpunt in Brussels has joined forces with a team of external experts that is examining the current collection in the light of decolonization, at the same time as looking at what could be added to it in the future. The curators come from a range of different fields that currently find themselves at the centre of public discourse. They are aware of what’s going on in the world and support any number of organizations with their valuable additional expertise.
Guest curators take up their pens
British trade magazine The Bookseller is a weekly that covers the business side of the literature industry. Every year it comes up with a Top 50, and it continually previews the most important books that will be published over the coming three months. In other words, The Bookseller is an important reference for all different levels of the book trade. The magazine recently put one of its issues entirely in the hands of the Black Agents and Editors’ Group. The columns written by the guest editors enabled the reading public to look at various parts of the book trade from a new perspective. The special edition of the magazine can be read in its entirety online.
Calling in the help of an external expert
The employees of a company or organization must be allowed to be entirely themselves and to express their diversity fully, in complete safety. To make its workplace a safe space, the Kaaitheater in Brussels asked Olave Nduwanje to carry out internal research. Olave conducted in-depth interviews with organizers of what claim to be safe(r) spaces, both in Brussels and beyond. His work led to a series of podcast episodes that offer an insight into the expertise, ambitions, experiences and vulnerabilities of the safe(r) spaces organizers.