Equality, Diversity and Inclusion update | Executive Director of Engagement

Over the last few months, we have welcomed hundreds of thousands of visitors through our doors, opened our hugely popular Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition and celebrated the end of the smash hit tour of our famous dinosaur Dippy at Norwich Cathedral.

We hosted a Nature Bar event space in Glasgow during COP26 in collaboration with our Ambassador David de Rothschild and his organisation Voice for Nature. As part of The New York Times Climate Hub, the Nature Bar gave visitors and delegates an opportunity to connect with the Museum’s solutions-focused science and a fantastically diverse line-up of young activists, explorers, artists and business leaders. 

A standout session for me was seeing our Biodiversity Researcher Dr Adriana De Palma discussing the pressures on our planet with DJ, music producer and environmental toxicologist Jayda G and activists Daphne Frias and Phoebe Hanson (Operations Director for Force of Nature) – a stellar panel and a fascinating discussion.

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Maintaining Momentum on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion | Executive Director of Engagement

by Clare Matterson, Executive Director of Engagement

It is wonderful to have the Museum open again and to welcome visitors back to our galleries and gardens. Reopening has enabled us to reinstate and extend our provision for neuro-diverse audiences and better serve our local communities. At the same time, work has also continued apace behind the scenes to make our Museum and workforce as inclusive as possible.

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Prioritising diversity and inclusion during lockdown | Executive Director of Engagement

In previous blogs I have outlined how the launch of our new strategy, has really galvanised our action on equality, inclusion and diversity.

Since my last post, we have appointed a new Head of Diversity and Talent who will take the lead in creating a working environment which is truly inclusive and in diversifying our workforce.

Since April, we have advertised as many roles as possible internally only, to allow for promotion. We know there is far greater diversity, particularly in terms of ethnicity, in our lower grade jobs so we want to offer opportunities for promotion wherever we can and since April 2020 40% of roles have been offered to internal candidates.

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Becoming a greener Museum; our plans to be net zero by 2035

Announcing a planetary emergency in January this year, little did we realise that the tragedy of Covid-19 would provide such a chilling warning that we ignore the degradation of the natural world at our peril.   

There is much to do.  A landmark study in May with contributions from our scientists reported that the impact on communities around the world will be dire if ecosystems decline further, with one million animals and plants facing extinction.  It is clear, recovery for health and the economy depend on the repair and recovery of the environment.  We all need to work towards a greener future in everything we do.  The Natural History Museum is no exception.   

Today, in an ambitious new plan, Sustainable by Nature, we are setting out our actions and commitments on how we will become even greener in the coming years. We developed the plan by challenging ourselves on how to reduce our impact on natural resources in our day-to-day business, and on how we will build-in sustainability for all new developments and initiatives. 

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Learning from the past; improving the present and planning for a more diverse and inclusive future…

This month we’re celebrating Black History Month by profiling the stories of people of African and Caribbean heritage who have contributed to natural history.  

On our website, we’re telling extraordinary stories from the past such as the tale of seventeenth century Surinamese freedman,  Graman Kwasi. A healer, naturalist, and spy he described a medicinal plant to ward off fever and parasites that is still used today.  

We will also feature unique tales of  twenty-first century Black-led endeavours in natural history, including climate change researchers and curators.  Nadine Gabriel is the Museum’s assistant curator of fossil mammals, with a first-class honours in MSci Geology under her belt, Nadine is a lover of field trips, who helps look after the Museum’s 250,000 fossil mammal specimens. 

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Reopening, Reviewing and Recruiting – keeping up the pace on Diversity and Inclusion

Since my last blog on 13 July we have continued to make progress on diversity and inclusion actions.  

It was with great excitement that we were able to reopen the museum to the public on Wednesday 5 August.  To add to the occasion, we worked with Nova which provides support for many of the communities in our borough who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and invited some local families ahead of the opening for a series of special visits.  Early in the morning of opening day, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, came to visit and enjoyed talking with the families and happily posed for selfies with the children.  And, we were also thrilled to hear the Mayor refer to the NHM as ‘the nation’s gem’ saying how we had ‘worked our socks off’ to open the Museum. 

As a museum committed to inclusiveness and diversity, we will continue to ensure that everyone is welcome and have organised dedicated slots for local community groups to come in over the summer holidays for a special visit. 

The Review of Names and Representation across our buildings and website is making good progress.  Angela Saini, British science journalist and author of Superior and The Return of Race Science has joined the steering group to give an external perspective.  The Review aims to report findings and early recommendations to our Executive Board towards the end of the summer.  Ready for opening, we placed notices in some of our gallery spaces and on the website to let visitors know about this work. 

We have begun changing how we recruit, select and develop the careers of people who work for NHM.  We will advertise roles internally only, wherever possible, giving more opportunities for career development and promotions.   We will also review job descriptions and person specifications for every new role recruited to ensure they are inclusive, and so we do not have any unnecessary barriers to applying. This might include, for example, removing the requirement for having a degree in roles which do not strictly need this qualification.  

Over the Autumn we will introduce Inclusive Leadership training for all senior managers as well as other learning and development initiatives for all staff.   Specifically, Gendered Intelligence will be coming back to run sessions for senior managers. We will be providing an intranet page for all staff with resources to help educate themselves in diversity and inclusion matters. E-learning courses and reading materials will be available for everyone to use. 

We are pleased that our Gender Pay Gap report for 19/20 shows a considerable reduction in the median gender pay gap from 13.1% to 6% in 2020.  This is a result of actions to address the gender imbalance in the more senior positions in the Museum. Our recently created Management Board has an equal gender split and we have been working hard to encourage flexible working in our more senior roles wherever possible. Maintaining a gender balance will be an important part of our workforce diversity and inclusion action plan. 

We’re planning to improve our data collection to give us better information about our staff profile. This will help us to promote diversity internally and ensure our processes and fair and inclusive. It will also help us understand our ethnicity pay gap and how best to address it. 

Earlier this month we held the first of our Diverse Voices events for colleagues with Director Mike Dixon in conversation with one of our recently appointed Trustees, Harris Bokhari. Harris is a well-known Diversity champion who recently wrote about the barriers to museums and galleries minority groups can experience. We were delighted that he was able to share his experience with us and we look forward to meeting Shami Chakrabarti, Human Rights lawyer, former Director of Liberty, former Chancellor of Essex University and former Shadow Attorney General as our next guest speaker. 

And finally, it is a delight to end with congratulations to Alex Bond, NHM senior curator in charge of birds, who was awarded the Royal Society’s Athena Prize with Beth Montague-Hellen for developing the LGBTQ+STEM initiative to boost the visibility of, and create a network for, LGBTQ+ people working in STEM fields, including establishing the first online directory of LGBTQ+ STEM professionals and the annual LGBTQ+ STEMinar conference.   And I leave the last word to Alex:  LGBTQ+ employees are often subject to discrimination and unwelcoming work environments. To combat this, we have empowered individual STEM professionals by giving them the resources to improve diversity and inclusion at their own institutions, whilst giving them confidence to be their full selves professionally.

What we are doing to tackle racism and promote diversity and inclusion

I joined the NHM two years ago, passionate about the natural world and all its diversity, yet fearful for its future as a result of the catastrophic loss of species and their habitats due to human action. And the past two years have not been a disappointment. I have found a passionate community at the NHM highly committed to protecting and promoting diversity in nature – it’s at the heart of our vision of a world where people and planet thrive.

Yet, the vastly increased awareness raised through the Black Lives Matter movement following the brutal murder of George Floyd has highlighted the stark inequalities across our society. It’s been a wake-up call that we haven’t been focussed enough on diversity for people at our Museum. If we are truly ‘for people and planet’ then we need to be.

And that this has happened when we are in the midst of a global pandemic which is widening further the inequality gap, drives home the point even more starkly.

Museums are places for society to come together, reflect, debate and discuss, but they can only be so if they are inclusive of the society within which they sit. We have a lot of work to do in diversifying our workforce, audiences, and the way we understand and talk about our collection until that is true.

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The pandemic is a pivotal moment to raise awareness of biodiversity loss

Biodiversity loss is low on the public agenda, but the pandemic could help us reassess our relationship with the natural world,  writes Clare Matterson, the Museum’s Director of Engagement.

A newfound appreciation for weeds in the cracks of city pavements, enjoying melodious birdsong in place of the booming traffic and marvelling at quiet clear blue skies have become daily lockdown news.

Amidst the tragedy of Covid-19, nature has thrived and as we have slowed down in lockdown its variety has caught our eye.

Today is International Day For Biological Diversity, created by the United Nations 27 years ago to raise awareness of biodiversity issues and celebrate that variety.

Since then scientists have warned us about the catastrophic loss of species and their habitat because of our actions.

We need that variety of life on earth for food, medicines and clean water, never mind a spiritual boost in tough times.

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