Equity Statement
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is committed to supporting our grantees’ extraordinary contributions to the many communities of Greater Philadelphia. We believe that a healthy cultural ecosystem requires a commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI; defined below). We recognize that, as a staff, we play a role in advancing those commitments in all facets of our work.
The Center prioritizes EDI values as intrinsic to our mission to support excellence in creative production. To this end, we intend to
- Identify and mitigate barriers resulting from identity-based disparities and systems of discrimination as they affect the Center’s work;
- Cultivate and value a diversity of perspectives among leadership, staff, consultants, grantees, and the communities we serve; and
- Foster a work environment in which every team member feels respected, supported in their growth, and able to contribute fully to the organization’s work.
Embodying these values requires an ongoing, deliberate process of learning, dialogue, and adaptation in service of our mission.
How the Center Defines EDI
- Equity is working toward fair opportunities and outcomes for all people or groups by addressing barriers resulting from unique disadvantages and challenges. Equity is different from equality, which assumes everyone starts on equal footing or with the same opportunities, ignoring basic differences among individuals and groups.
- Diversity refers to the variations of different characteristics in a group of people—the people all around us. These characteristics could be everything that makes us unique, such as our cognitive skills and personality traits, along with the characteristics that shape our identity (e.g., age, cultural background, faith practice/religion, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, geography, occupation, race, sexual orientation, political views, and many more).
- Inclusion can be defined as achieving an environment in which every participant feels respected, is granted equitable access to growth, and is able to contribute to the organization, community, or any other group of people. Inclusion provides an atmosphere where all team members belong, feel connected to the group, and can thrive.