Benchmarking diversity and inclusivity in the UK event industry: a state of the nation

The conversation around diversity at UK events and conferences has recently intensified, particularly in the last 12 months, adding to various recent global movements, such as #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, #HeForShe, and has built on the recent increasing awareness of cognitive diversity (Bryan, 2020; Chiu, 2020; Stengel, 2020; UNESCO,n.d.). The shift to virtual events in the midst of the pandemic has highlighted the importance of improving inclusivity of events in online settings. While wide access to a diverse range of speakers and audiences has been made more available than ever before, events designed and implemented with careful consideration of equality, diversity and inclusion remain scarce (Parry, 2020).

Working in collaboration with GET DICE Ltd, this project therefore has four main objectives:

1. To map and analyse the landscape and scale of diversity and inclusivity in the UK event industry focusing on online events taken place in 2020 based on the nine Protected Characteristics of the UK Equality Act (2010), to help GET DICE capture the scale of the issue.
2. To help our business partner (GET DICE) achieve its vision (i.e., promoting diversity and inclusion across the UK event industry) and engage with more event organisers around diversity and inclusion.
   1. investigate the practical and perceived challenges preventing UK event organisers from promoting diverse and inclusive events
   2. examine their perception of receiving regulatory and educational support, and EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) certification 
3. To design an online scoreboard system where any event organisation can submit their event details, including the EDI profile of events, in order to compare themselves with industry benchmarks.
4. To generate and disseminate knowledge of diversity and inclusion in UK (online) events via a final project report (a white paper) and webinar.