SPIRE CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
ACCESS, DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION STATEMENT
The Spire Chamber Ensemble recognizes that barriers and biases prevent diverse populations from participating freely in all aspects of our organization. Our ADEI efforts work to identify, influence, and act on strategic opportunities to make the organization welcoming and accessible to musicians, audience members, educational partners, donors, staff members, and communities of diverse experiences.
Our commitment to promoting Access, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the choral field is as follows:
In closing, we believe the most authentic way to promote Access, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is to program and collaborate with diverse voices and not for diverse voices. We believe there is an especially important distinction here. Real and lasting systemic change must be a community driven effort and therefore our work strives to inspire community activism in a myriad of forms while simultaneously creating a sense of belonging.
Our commitment to promoting Access, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the choral field is as follows:
- As the Founder and Artistic Director, Ben A. Spalding will spend significant time researching and learning the music of Black, Brown, Indigenous voices and styles.
- Embrace idiomatic Black choral music and find ways to incorporate respectful and thoughtful arrangements in choral program, contextualizing this music with singers and audience.
- Program non-idiomatic (concert Black choral music, including music of pre-20th century composers.
- Non-idiomatic, as it relates to black composers, refers to the original concert music that is not part of the traditional idiomatic canon associated with black musicians. That canon includes spirituals, gospel, jazz, hip-hop, and rap among others.
- Strive for representation across each program and/or concert season without tokenizing.
- Dedicate time to create and facilitate scaffolded anti-racism learning opportunities for students during educational outreach/choral rehearsals. Implement non-European pedagogies across the choral discipline (voice, musicianship, choral literature, conducting)
- Build reciprocal relationships with BBI communities that resist notions of white saviorism.
- Research local issues of segregation, inequity, and income inequality that adversely impact Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, and investigate methods of concrete support, solidarity, and investment that can be offered to those communities.
- Seek expertise from Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists, and culture bearers, compensate and credit them for their labor.
- Assess current board diversity and reaffirm commitment to board diversity.
- Hire Black, Brown, and Indigenous guest singers, instrumentalists, composers, collaborators, creative, and educational choral leaders, etc.
- Work to diversify members of the choir and orchestra through authentic relationships and exchanges with historically black schools and other institutions.
In closing, we believe the most authentic way to promote Access, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is to program and collaborate with diverse voices and not for diverse voices. We believe there is an especially important distinction here. Real and lasting systemic change must be a community driven effort and therefore our work strives to inspire community activism in a myriad of forms while simultaneously creating a sense of belonging.