We want to genuinely connect and work with all people from all backgrounds who live in a place, a community. We value the benefits of different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences.
Our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Policy, and Action Plan outline how we work to achieve this, being accountable to our values with ongoing appraisal. A key part of this is understanding who we are currently including, and who is missing from our work. That is where the demographic data comes in.
We use the data to build a bigger picture of how inclusive and accessible our events are. We know that lots of people are tired of filling out surveys, which is why we’ve worked to ensure we ask a minimum of important questions, and keep them all optional.
Here are a few examples of how we might use the data we collect:
- We’ve found a low attendance of young people. So as an organisation we are making a youth strategy with toolkits and internal workshops on how to engage meaningfully with young people.
- We find a much lower proportion of people identifying as Christian attending an event, compared to the local population. We make sure we distribute fliers to the local churches, and check if there’s anything inaccessible about our event. Whilst talking to a vicar, we realise our events clash with Sunday services, and so we re-arrange the timing.
- We find that no one with childcare responsibilities is attending. So we make sure our events don’t clash with school pick up times and offer colouring books and activities for children at our events.