We are working on an outreach strategy that pulls together institutional outreach framework with faculty-specific outreach to target our efforts towards attracting BAME students in disciplines which do not traditionally attract BAME students. This is a significant change from previous institutional approaches to outreach and enables us to focus on attracting BAME students into creative disciplines. To that end we have had campus visits from leadership teams in two local schools with high proportions of BAME students, we have targeted those feeders where we get the highest proportion of BAME students in disciplines that traditionally attract BAME students but where specific courses do not recruit strongly from. Examples of this include campaigns with MFI, Manchester School of Theatre and SODA.

We have received funding from SONY to run a SODA related Mentoring and Summer School for BAME students – this is part of the Scholarship provided by SONY PlayStation Career Pathways Program. We will run a 3 day non-residential SS this summer for Year 12s and then follow up with mentoring support as they progress into Year 13.

We have delivered ‘Aspiring Actors’ sessions to encourage more BAME students to progress into acting. This year we ran some visits – but we plan to run some Year 13 mentoring for aspiring BAME actors to support them through the audition process. We are joining forces with The Palace Theatre over the summer and next year to run targeted outreach for BAME students in local schools in partnership with our Manchester School of Theatre. This is a new approach to outreach that I believe will make a significant difference. Peter Riley, Head of Widening participation is now embedding this approach into the institutional outreach strategy to ensure that we have targeted campaigns to attract BAME students in areas that have not previously attracted BAME students.

We will run a Community Festival in the summer term which has been co-created by staff, students, and the local community with a particular focus on BAME communities, in partnership with BAME communities. Our Poetry Library is working with local BAME poets as part of this festival, promoting a diversity of poets and poetry through their events. We will scale up the student-led engagement of this festival and I am currently in discussion with the SU on this as part of an institutional student-led civic engagement event over the summer. Josie Sykes, our community engagement officer, is leading on this and, although this is a departure from previous years, she is fully on board with the inclusion of student-led events as part of the community festival with a focus on the inclusion of BAME communities.