We developed a consultancy model so that our Young Leaders could get paid to work with cultural and creative organisations who were struggling to access Black, Global Majority and working class talent. For a while it was fun and everyone got paid, but we started to realise the limitations of this model. As long as external consultants could tick the boxes that institutions were failing to meet, there was no accountability for long term, embedded change.
The institutional practices around diverse recruitment are deeply flawed and maintain the status quo of white middle class leadership extracting knowledge from Black, Global Majority and working class communities.