The ongoing national dialogue about racism has led us to consider how the Aspen Music Festival and School could best respond more intentionally to the current environment and contribute to lasting, positive change in the world of music and beyond. To fully explore this issue, we engaged in an intensive, months-long process in 2020 to codify and deepen our organization’s commitment to anti-racist values. The resulting statement of our inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA) commitments records what we are prepared to be held accountable for as we continue our work to embody the Aspen Idea: celebrating the union of mind, body, and spirit through music. We believe we must not only be intentional about these commitments, we must also be explicit that they intend to embrace the talents and contributions of AMELIA (African, Middle Eastern, Latin, Indigenous, and Asian) people, lest we continue reflecting a society that privileges White talents and contributions. We are continuing in this work and report on our progress quarterly to the AMFS's IDEA committee, which consists of alumni, artist-faculty, staff, and Board members. In addition, we commit to being more open to input from all stakeholders. We understand that diversity and inclusion go hand in hand, and if we are to achieve greater equity, or fairness, as an organization and a field, we must be more inviting of criticism. The Aspen Music Festival and School’s Statement of Commitment was developed working with Hillombo LLC beginning in July of 2020 and it was completed in March of 2021. Hillombo began the project by holding conversations with key stakeholders and reviewing financial and governance documents as well as audience and student feedback. The findings of this phase noted challenges and suggestions for increasing racial diversity coupled with feedback from staff and students that there was a strong desire for an organizational culture more flexible in terms of being open to input, particularly on matters pertaining to racism. The next phase of the work involved Hillombo leading racial literacy sessions with staff and select alumni and board members. In these sessions we examined the intersections of Dr. Ibram Kendi’s How To Be An Antiracist, Marty Linsky, and Ronald Heifetz’s Adaptive Leadership model and the White Supremacy Culture framework by Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones and how they might be applied to help diagnose the challenges of the organization. Upon completion, a committee of staff, alumni, faculty, and board was convened and over several meetings developed the Statement in order to make public our commitment to move forward on the challenges that were identified. The Statement, below, was approved by the Board in March 2021 with a plan to achieve the initial goals by September 2022. Read our IDEA Progress Report about the goals we have achieved in 2022 and our progress towards others in the Aspen Music Festival and School's 2022 Annual Report. Introduction/Rationale
How Did We Develop the Statement?
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