One year on from the murder of George Floyd, we look at the progress we have made since we announced our Black Lives Matter commitment plan. These commitments were developed through conversations with our Students’ Union and BME Network and formally adopted to ensure an actively anti-racist, inclusive and safe environment for all of us to study and work in. They are being monitored and implemented under the aegis of EDI Committee chaired by Professors Alex Hughes and Dibyesh Anand.
A huge amount of work has started to meet these commitments and through the effort and dedication of many colleagues we have seen progress made in a number of areas. We know too that cultural change takes time and this will be an ongoing process to achieve our commitments, embed and maintain the change and be in a position to adapt further to ensure the principles of equity and inclusion are always at the forefront of our life and work.
We want to look back on what we have so far achieved as an organisation and also to acknowledge that there is still work to be done to make Westminster a university that fully recognises and celebrates difference and provides all our people with the support and development they need to succeed.
Below are some key achievements we have made so far. On 26 June 2021 we will be publishing a progress report on each commitment individually.
Learning, Teaching and Research
Progress is being made on diversifying and decolonising our curriculum and teaching practices (Commitment 1). The Centre for Education and Teaching Innovation (CETI) has led a collaborative project with students and colleagues to develop a ‘decolonise and diversify toolkit’ to provide colleagues with practical resources to assess their curricula. CETI are also currently working on developing a framework, and practical suggestions, for EDI work in Schools. There has also been a funding bid to recruit EDI student champions for each college and to support student co-creator groups on decolonising and diversifying in each college. Work continues to support our Diversity and Inclusion Research Community, including the hosting of a workshop on research opportunities for BME Colleagues held in our School of Humanities and our School of Social Sciences has launched PhD scholarships for UK BME applicants from under-represented backgrounds (Commitment 9).
Student and Colleague Support
A new impact and evaluation officer, based in CETI, has been recruited and has started to look at how we address and eliminate awarding gaps (Commitment 2) at Westminster. Research is also underway to help us to understand why the awarding gaps at Westminster reduced during the pandemic in order to consolidate and build on gains, while AdvanceHE Leadership workshops are currently taking place to tackle awarding gaps. We have also established liaison with an external consultant to consider the applicability of a Cultural Sensitivity Scale approach to Westminster’s curriculum development and student service design (Commitment 4). To encourage students to feel safe and supported, we launched the Report and Support platform in February 2021, which provides guidance and support for students who disclose experiences of harassment, discrimination and hate crime (Commitment 3). We are also undertaking a review of the dignity at work and study policy (Commitment 12), to further address issues of harassment, bullying and discrimination for colleagues and students. We have produced a report reviewing the merits and demerits of the charter marks Athena SWAN and the Race Equality Charter and are evaluating these in line with alternative marks (Commitment 7).
Like all universities we annually conduct and publish equal pay audits (Commitment 5) at every level including an external audit of diversity in leadership and pay gap audits. To enable our colleagues to act on the information we gather in these reports and to help ensure we behave, promote and reward fairly we have run unconscious bias training for all senior colleagues. Our commitment to EDI throughout the recruitment process has been reviewed and a plan has been drafted (Commitment 6). Guidance for Managers has been provided. We have extended our teams, and assigned EDI responsibilities across the university, a Head of Learning and Development has been appointed, starting June 2021 (Commitments 6&10), EDI leads have been appointed for each school and we are currently consulting widely across the organisation to finalise our first EDI Strategy (Commitment 8).
Black History at Westminster
In 2020/21 a committee was formed to run Black History Year, not just Black History Month (Commitment 14). From November 2020 to April 2021 we hosted eight events with 1,414 sign-ups and 768 attendees on a range of subjects including History, Politics, Arts, Music, Literature, Mental Health and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. We have a major event planned in October 2021 while future events are to be linked to global recognition days e.g. IWD and World Mental Health Day. We are expecting to publish a Black History Year report in September 2021 and Black History Year will continue as a standing feature in the University’s calendar of events subject to funding and resourcing.
While great progress has been made we want to be clear that this is an ongoing process and there is no room for complacency. We now have a Commitments Monitoring Group that meets regularly to check progress and ensure we are fulfilling our commitments.
Reflecting on the plan, Professor Dibyesh Anand, co-chair of BME Network, said: “In the spirit of our BLM commitment, we have acknowledged the important role of leadership and inclusive decision making in bringing about cultural change. Through the diverse makeup of the EDI committee, formation of School EDI leads group, and regular interactions between senior management with colleague networks, we are ensuring that all voices get heard and are valued. It’s our openness that is one of our greatest achievements.”
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