Shakespeare’s Globe and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama co-host a two-day symposium exploring one of the most crucial questions in theatre today.

The arts are positioned in a moment of great potential: industry and academic leaders are being held accountable to create more ‘inclusive’ training centres, programmes and venues. However, new questions have revealed a tremendous gap between desired outcomes and practical reality.

Over two days we’ll consider the use of institutional frameworks such as target setting, diversity policies and decolonisation practices, and consider how they might be contributing to – and intervening in – contemporary discourses in the conservatoire and in the professional theatre. How are the Globe and Central specifically working for and against notions of Shakespeare as a monument of white privilege? And how do we all engage meaningfully with professional and student actors in the mandates for inclusivity, diversity and equity in the academy and rehearsal room?