The Mighty Creatives

Who we are

The Mighty Creatives (TMC) is a charity committed to improving the personal, educational, cultural and social lives of children and young people (CYP) through creative and cultural education.

Our charitable purpose is to provide arts and cultural opportunities for CYP from birth to 30 years old, particularly those who are the most disadvantaged and excluded, in order to contribute to the fight against child poverty.

Our vision is of a world where all CYP will harness the power of arts, creativity, and culture in order to transform themselves, their communities, and their futures.

Our culture and values

Our guiding principles

1.      We will listen and act: embedding children and young people’s voices throughout our work from conception of programme to delivery and governance and we will encourage others to do the same.

2.      We will work collaboratively: partnership working is central to the work we develop to improve creative outcomes and cultural opportunities for our region’s children and young people.

3.      We will respond to need: we focus on nurturing and supporting the creativity of children in need and those working for them to promote high quality cultural practice.

4.      We will champion Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: we stand in solidarity with all marginalised communities across the world and will use our voice to speak out against injustice. We commit to listening, learning and taking action to improve access to creative opportunities for our region’s children and young people.

5.      Engagement with artists and educators is driven by a personalised, person centre pedagogy in which mentoring, and coaching play a fundamental role in generating personal change.

6.      The creative voices of young people will be at the heart of the creative or cultural experience.

Our Values

Our values are inspired by the work of Munira Thobani and her work on the Thobani 6C Self Audit Tool

1.      We seek Coherence in our work: Social justice, equality and equity matters to us.  We constantly review and refresh the narratives of why equality matters to us in our professional (and political) practices.  We strive to have a coherent vision and set of values on equality and share this vision with your stakeholders.  We set out our equality objectives to support us in delivering our purpose fairly and equitably.

2.      We seek to raise Consciousness in our work: by increasing knowledge, understanding, awareness and empathy. We strive to improve our awareness of our privilege and possible complicity in maintaining discrimination and disadvantage.

3.      We are committed to tackling inequality and disproportionality in all its forms.

4.      We strive to find the courage to challenge the status-quo in perpetuating discrimination and inequality. We strive to act and influence the ways which can shift the balance of power and privilege in our work and build our courage by connecting and networking with the individuals, groups and organisations who are tackling discrimination, inequality and disproportionality.

5.      We seek Connectedness with self-organised equality seeking groups and draw strength from being an ally by working in tackling discrimination that is direct, indirect and or inter-sectional.

6.      We prioritise Co-production by developing leadership models which lead and empower others so that their contributions to achieve greater equitable outcomes for all our communities.   We ensure there is accountability of everyone in the organisation to act consistently with achieving our organisational purpose and equity ambitions.

We strive for these values to be evident in all aspects of our organisation: governance, leadership, programmes, income generation and operations and processes.

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

The Mighty Creatives values diversity and is fully committed to promoting equality of opportunity, recognising that people are an extremely valuable resource for the organisation.

The Mighty Creatives is committed to encouraging equality and diversity among our workforce and eliminating unlawful discrimination.

The aim is for our workforce to be truly representative of all sections of society and our customers, and for each employee to feel respected and able to give their best.

Our Diversity Statement

The Mighty Creatives’ believe that the way we act and the things we do have an effect on the world around us. To make sure this effect is a positive one we believe in continuously reflecting on our day-to-day activities, beliefs and values in order to challenge stereotypes and assumptions that may guide our decision-making and action-planning. This is why we use critical thinking and imagination in our planning, evaluation, reporting and performance management processes. This practice helps us to take more risks and challenge our own and the sector’s perceptions. As part of this, we are committed to co-production, and to championing and listening to the voices of children and young people.

Our commitments

The Mighty Creatives endorses the statutory obligations required by legislation, best practice codes and expectations of our funders, staff, participants and partners in the areas of sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, ethnic origin, nationality, socio-economic status, religion or belief, disability or age.

We are committed to providing a working environment in which all of our people are able to realise their full potential and to contribute to the charity’s success. We are working towards best practice recruitment based on equal opportunities in order to diversify our paid and volunteer workforce and boards and pursue workplace practices, policies and procedures that enable all The Mighty Creatives to thrive.

We will actively create a culture of inclusion across our programmes and services. We will collaborate with the communities we work with to celebrate the talents of all the people and make a positive impact.  We will challenge discrimination and prejudice where we find it. We will actively identify, champion and share good practice.

We are committed to doing this as we see that it will improve benefits to participants, deliver better quality of services and improve the effectiveness of our organisation.

We will make opportunities for training, development and progress available to all staff, who will be helped and encouraged to develop their full potential, so their talents and resources can be fully utilised to maximise the efficiency of the organisation.

Employment practices and procedures will be reviewed when necessary to ensure fairness, and also update them and the policy to take account of changes in the law.