Radical Listening Week 2025: Towards a Charter for Equity
Event: Lunchtime Podcast - Working Conditions and Flexible Working
When: Thursday 19th June 2025
Where: Online - YouTube
Time: 12pm - 1pm
About the Podcast
Hosted by Roo Dhissou (Charter Caretaker)
Contributors: Hassan Hussain, Romanah Buchanan, John Broomfield
Based on research findings that highlight burnout, access barriers, and unstable contracts, this session explores what fairer working could look like.
We ask: what if flexibility, access, and care were built in and not added on?
It feeds directly into the Charter for Equity’s call for a shared working conditions framework that centres access and wellbeing.
This event is part of Radical Listening Week 2025. Expect provocation, collaboration, and a shift away from extractive consultations.
What is Radical Listening?
Radical Listening is rooted in the belief that power needs to be rebalanced across the cultural sector. It centres the voices and priorities of people most excluded from influence. Listening is a verb. It is about redefining whose realities shape the future of our work.
Radical Listening Week 2025: Towards a Charter for Equity
Radical Listening Week brings together cultural workers, freelancers, organisations, and communities across the West Midlands to explore what equity looks like in practice.
Through conversation, reflection, and shared provocation, we’ll explore key themes from the Charter for Equity research by Dr. Lucy Lopez. Together, we’re building towards a framework that centres lived experience, challenges structural inequality, and supports long-term change. This is a space to listen with intention and act collectively towards a more equitable cultural sector in the West Midlands.
Radical Listening Week is part of Culture Central’s Inclusive Network, a co-created programme that highlights the voices, insights, and needs of creatives from traditionally excluded backgrounds.
Host
Artist/researcher Roo Dhissou works with communities, diasporas and her own histories. Using community-engaged practice, craft, cooking, performance and installation, she explores how communal and individual identities are formed. She has worked with BMAG, New Art Gallery Walsall, Niru Ratnam, The Bluecoat, Tate Liverpool, GLOAM, Primary and internationally in Spain and Canada. Her work is represented in permanent collections, including the Arts Council Collection, and she won the Tate Liverpool award in 2020, New Contemporaries 2024 and Serpentine Support Structures 2024. This year Roo received an award from Sir Lenny Henry for significant work in Equality, Diversity, Access and Inclusion at Birmingham City University advocating for the rights of disabled students and carers.
Contributors
Hassan Hussain
Hassan Hussain is a writer, researcher, and facilitator. Having recently completed a PhD investigating the de/construction of gay men in contemporary British theatre, his practice explores the transformative effects of (queer) histories and lived experiences on present and future iterations of (queer) identities, communities, and (sub)cultures.
As a proud Birmingham Bab, Hassan is particularly invested in situating his work within the city and has secured development funding from Arts Council England to redress the underrepresentation of queer South Asian voices in British playwriting and is currently working on his first full-length play. Moreover, his involvement in coordinating and producing a diverse array of (research) panels around queer identity, creative workshops, festivals, and live-art events further enriches his practice. Hassan is keen to be involved in projects that centre queer experiences, performances and histories.
Romanah is an award-winning creative entrepreneur, artistic director, choreographer and speaker. Her journey as an entrepreneur kicked off when she was just 17, co-founding her very first venture 'Eloquent'. This achievement earned the organisation the prestigious Queen's Award For Voluntary Service, a nod to the remarkable impact it has on the community.
As the Artistic Director of the award-winning Eloquent Dance, Romanah's leadership has been instrumental in shaping the company's legacy of artistic excellence. Her deep love for dance is the heartbeat of her creative expression, an inspiration for her groundbreaking work.
Romanah's choreography extends to music videos, outdoor productions and live shows, including collaborations with prestigious institutions like the Birmingham Hippodrome, on the Birmingham Weekender, and a most recent commission with the Birmingham 2023 Festival, for a new musical 'What If.' In addition to her thriving arts career, Romanah wears the hat of a qualified lecturer. She shares her extensive knowledge and expertise as a Dance Lecturer at Performers College, building on her previous role at Walsall College.
Fuelled by her unwavering passion for the arts, entrepreneurship, and education, Romanah consistently thrives in her various endeavours with a collection of notable awards, including Birmingham's Top 30 Under 30 Most Inspirational Young People (2019), Author of the Year (2021), and West Midlands Lieutenancy Young Active Citizen (2022).
John Broomfield
John Eng Kiet Bloomfield is Executive Director of The GAP Arts Project, in Balsall Heath Birmingham. After relocating to the city in 2021, he is delighted to have found a role working at his neighbourhood arts organisation, one embedded in multiple communities and ecologies.
Previously, he was Director (Maternity Cover) (2024) at Peer, London and Senior Curator of Programmes at Wysing Arts Centre (2016–2023), where he worked to centre artists through the organisation’s programme of residencies, exhibitions, festivals and digital commissions.
At Wysing, he played a pivotal role in shaping an increasingly inclusive and accessible agenda for Wysing and has managed the Syllabus artist development programme since 2017, securing the programme’ future until 2034 through a landmark funding agreement.
John has also worked at Black Dog Publishing, developed independent projects with Arcadia Missa, BFI, Flat Time House, Tate Film and MOT and has worked for artist Isaac Julien. He ia Co-Chair of CVAN West Midlands and a trustee of Arts Catalyst.