Equity Impact Report for the Theatre
For two years, the team at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) in Ashland, Oregon, have worked to establish and nurture a culture of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) within the organization and surrounding community. Over its 80 year history, the festival has produced art of exceptional quality, drawing audiences from around the world and contributing significantly to the mountain community of Ashland.
Although one of the oldest and largest repertory theaters in the country, OSF has not been immune to challenges facing arts organizations. The pandemic wreaked havoc on its financial sustainability, and an OpEd specifically demanded OSF (among others) to be held to a higher standard in building racial equity and breaking down systemic injustices.
In the midst of these substantial setbacks, the small team at OSF committed to building a collaborative, expansive, and co-liberative practice to impact patron experience, employee morale, and community engagement.
Writing the report
The team asked me to help them reflect on the first two years of the IDEA program. Our goal together was to (1) demonstrate the work that had been done so far, and (2) use this documentation as a roadmap for continued work. Over several months, we combed through piles of content, training curriculum, consultant engagements, and events in the community to reveal themes, through-lines, and opportunities. Then we took the concept of IDEA and mapped it to the working systems and processes of the organization, creating a shared language and basis for future evaluation.
The report seemed to have a life of its own, growing larger each time we met to review. Our excitement grew as we began to understand the immense extent of the work that had been accomplished—how it had touched every corner of the organization and was felt in the community.
A sneak peek at what’s inside
Stats, numbers of people trained, and jargon are boring. So we skipped all that. Instead, we sought to reveal the nuance and complexity of work. Achieving impact in equity has to look much deeper than the number of training events or similar metrics. We hope this report demonstrates what a community of like-minded individuals and a group of partner consultants can accomplish when they work toward a shared purpose—the living embodiment of collective impact.
Inside, you’ll find:
Cultural context for events happening inside and around the organization
Introductions to the frameworks and mindsets of IDEA work at OSF
A vision for shifting from a transactional to transformational culture
Program strategy for embedding IDEA values and practices across all aspects of the organization
Directory of IDEA-committed consultancies and their specialties
What’s next
Any systems-change effort takes time and consistency. These recent years have been about assessing the position of the organization relative to cultural goals, then establishing initial processes for building equity both inside and outside the organization. After two years, the team has a clearer view into training and project strategies, and have built a deep bench of partner organizations and consultants to contribute to the work.
This report tells the stories of this early work, capturing personal anecdotes for what the work has already meant to people. It’s not yet time for a full program evaluation, which can require 3-5 years to reach enough maturity for measurement. But even before a full quantitative and qualitative measure is available, the team employ the Equitable Evaluation Framework to build their emerging logic model and theory of change guiding their work. These will form the basis for evaluation in the coming years.
I celebrate the work completed so far, and support the efforts of the OSF team moving forward.