Milestones accomplished in our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Plan

In our strivings for equality, diversity and inclusion we have accomplished the following milestones in our plan:

1) Since 2020 our new hirings of staff, full-time and part-time have accomplished gender balance and have included individuals of the LGBTQ+ community and persons of varying economic classes.

2) In 2024 a qualified person of colour has joined our board (Beverly Parayno). Furthermore our board has gender balance and persons of varying economic backgrounds.

3) In 2023-24 we initiated a policy of outreach to encourage, identify and invite the involvement of persons of colour in our emerging writer programmes, including mentorships, publication and public performance.

4) On an ongoing and long established basis we involve writers diverse in colour, gender, sexual orientation and social class in our festivals and publications. Writers from minority communities are engaged in numbers which exceed their share of Irish demographics.

5) We conduct ongoing assessments of diversity in our programmes.

6) We seek to reflect linguistic diversity in our programmes, especially the Irish language. We arrange the participation of writers in our poetry festival who are representative of our minority European linguistic communities. For instance we have arranged publication and translation into English and Irish of poets from Lithuania, Poland, Macedonia, Germany, Norway, Wales and the Netherlands.

7) We are signatories of the Safe to Create Code of Behaviour and our staff members engage with Safe to Create workshops and training programmes.