Updated April 2024
Where do we want to be?
We want to make our artistic offer as accessible as it can be, and our programming and commissioning will feature a broad and diverse range of artists, composers and musicians being engaged and profiled by the London Sinfonietta.
How do we get there?
Across our programme we are committing to featuring composers from different backgrounds and perspectives. We have increased representation in the disabled and global majority background music creators that we have commissioned over the past 2 seasons and have also achieved a 50:50 gender balance across all our commissioning activity.
Our recent artistic season included a concert that addresses how hearing and deaf audiences can experience the same music together (Nwando Ebizie’s Rise and Then Fall, November ‘23); and concerts delivered by a diverse and inclusive list of world-class artists representing long-standing (Martyn Brabbins) and new relationships (Vimbayi Kaziboni, Manoj Kamps, Hidejiro Honjoh), and composers representing both the white western tradition (Birtwistle, Reich and Wolfe) and those from the Global Majority (Ebizie, Fujikura, León and Lewis).
Since 2020, via changes we have made in our recruitment processes for participants, we have increased numbers from under-represented backgrounds in our talent development schemes for emerging composers, conductors and musicians. In our most recent 2023 Open call for our Writing the Future programme, 70% of all participants identified as having characteristics currently under-represented in the arts. Monitoring statistics showed us that 22% of applicants identified as being of a Global Majority background, 55% identified as non-heterosexual, and 76% as either disabled or neurodivergent. Applications were gender-balanced with 51% men and 49% women or gender minorities. We will continue to refine our processes to make them as fair and equitable as possible.
