Radical Listening Week 2025: Towards a Charter for Equity
Charlene Carter-James, Partnerships & Development Manager at Culture Central, on Radical Listening Week 2025, 16-20 June.
We’re really excited to launch Radical Listening Week 2025 by announcing our flagship event for the week Opening Up Access Symposium on Monday 16th June 2025 in partnership with Open Theatre.
This year, Radical Listening Week (16-20 June 2025) is focused on shaping the framework for a Charter for Equity, a shared commitment to long-term change across the region’s cultural sector.
Radical Listening Week includes:
An online symposium
A series of lunchtime podcasts
A social media takeover
A members’ event
See all the details for each event below.
In 2023, the first Radical Listening Week built on a legacy of Culture Central projects that put lived experience at the centre. The approach was first shaped through More Than a Moment - a pledge co-created with the Black Creative Workforce and influenced by Transforming Narratives, which championed cross-cultural dialogue and global majority perspectives. It brought together daily livestreams spotlighting lived experiences from across the sector, from Black and South Asian creatives to LGBTQIA+, D/deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, and working-class voices. Each session unpacked the barriers these communities face and called out what needs to change.
We’ve now made Radical Listening Week a part of our Inclusive Network programme, a space co-created with and for creatives from traditionally excluded groups from across the West Midlands.
Radical Listening Week continues the sectors commitment to both listen and act and asks, ‘What comes next and how can we work together?’
Towards A West Midlands Charter for Equity
The Charter began as a call from over 100 sector voices at our Collectively Strategising Culture Summit 2024 where we asked ‘What are 'our' components of a collective, actionable, cultural strategy for the West Midlands?’ One of the strongest asks from that space was a need for shared standards, common goals, and collective accountability around equity at the centre of our strategy.
We commissioned researcher Dr. Lucy Lopez to analyse sector insights and turn years of lived experience into clear, practical recommendations for a Charter for Equity.
From the research, we have identified six key themes that cut across roles, organisations, and art forms.
● Opening up Access – Embedding access from the start as a core part of planning, design and delivery.
● Finance and Economics- addressing pay, precarity and funding. Exploring equitable approaches to funding decisions and areas of investment.
● Working Conditions – Creating safer, fairer and more sustainable environments for all cultural workers.
● Leadership and Governance – Shifting who holds power, how decisions are made and who’s values shape the direction of organisations.
● Recruitment Practices – Challenging how people get hired, who gets in and what kinds of experience and potential are recognised.
● Equity and Intersectionality – Understanding how race, class, disability, gender and other identities interacts and designing for those realities.
Radical Listening Week 2025 brings those themes and that challenge back into focus as we collaborate on finding the solutions.
Radical Listening Week 2025 is about collaboration. We’re using the six themes from the research as a framework to dig deeper, ask sharper questions, and explore what real change looks like across the sector by testing ideas.
What’s On:
Monday 16th June: RLW Symposium - Opening Up Access Symposium in partnership with Open Theatre
Time: 10am - 4:30pm
Where: Online
Watch here
Our flagship event, delivered with Open Theatre, centres the voices of d/Deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent cultural workers.
We’ll share headline data from the Charter for Equity research and explore what radical inclusion looks like through the lens of the 10 Principles of Disability Justice.
We’ll also launch the Opening Up Access Resource Pack, a legacy of our Culture Volunteer programme, offering practical guidance to help organisations embed access from the start.
Tuesday 17th June: RLW Lunchtime Podcast - Equity and Intersectionality
Time: 12pm - 1pm
Where: Online - YouTube
Watch here
Hosted by Selina Thompson Ltd
Discussion led by Selina Thompson, Toni-Dee Paul, Toni Lewis
Contributors: Demi Nandhra, Hazel Sealeaf, Dee Manning
Central to the Charter research is the need to centre people with overlapping barriers, not just single-issue approaches. We explore how equity strategies can embed care, trauma awareness, and lived experience from the start.
We ask: what would change if those most affected by inequity led the solutions?
These reflections shape the Charter’s focus on intersectional design, accountability, and collective care.
Wednesday 18th June: Social Media Takeover - Finance and Economics
Featuring Stoke Creates Exchange Forum
We’ll spotlight the financial realities of working in culture, for freelancers and salaried cultural workers. Expect candid reflections on economic inequality, fair pay, and what sustainable careers really look like.
Check out this blog and our social media channels (Instagram & LinkedIn) to tap into this conversation.
Thursday 19th June: Culture Central Members’ Breakfast Meeting - Leadership and Governance - MEMBERS’ EVENT
Time: 8:30am - 10:30am
Where: Central Birmingham
Facilitated by Selina Thompson
Confirmed Contributor: Kate DeRight (Spectra)
Visual Notes: Millie Yarwood
The Charter research points to the need for power-sharing and structural change.
This session explores alternative leadership models, anti-racist governance, and peer accountability. It builds the Charter’s case for rethinking how decisions are made and who holds power, so leadership reflects our values, not legacy systems.
We ask: how can we redesign leadership to reflect our ethics, not just our legacies?
The ideas feed into the Charter’s framework for more transparent, equitable governance across the region.
Read insights from the session here.
Thursday 19th June: RLW Lunchtime Podcast - Working Conditions and Flexible Working
Time: 12pm - 1pm
Where: Online - YouTube
Watch here
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’s call for a shared working conditions framework that centres access and wellbeing.
Friday 20th June: RLW Lunchtime Podcast – Recruitment Practices
Time: 12pm - 1pm
Where: Online - YouTube
Watch here
Hosted by Lucy Lopez (Charter for Equity Researcher)
Contributors: Nikki Riggon, Tina Hofman, Hazel Sealeaf
This session draws on the Charter findings on exclusion in hiring and limited access to opportunity, we challenge who gets in and how.
We ask: what if recruitment was led by values, not credentials?
It supports the Charter’s push for sector-wide recruitment reform, co-designed with those most impacted by inequality.
Listen In
Radical Listening Week runs from 16th - 20th June 2025, a week of podcasts, provocation, and sector-wide reflection on what equity means in practice.
Save the date and follow along as we share insights, tools, and voices from across the region.
Subscribe to Culture Central on YouTube here
Take Part
Follow us on social media to share your insights, reflections and feedback during #RadicalListeningWeek.
Follow Culture Central on Instagram and LinkedIn, Facebook and Threads.
What is Radical Listening?
Radical listening means listening with intent to understand, not defend.
It asks you to:
● Hold space for uncomfortable truths
● Value lived experience as expertise
● Reserve judgement, biases and internal narratives
It’s about changing how we work, not just what we say and how we support each other in the process.
Contact Us
For questions or enquiries, email charlenecarterjames@culturecentral.co.uk