Anti-Racism May 2022

We at Team BKP are on a journey to create safe spaces for everyone in our community.

Yet we do not have the lived experiences of many of the actors and creatives that we welcome into our spaces.

We benefit from many different types of intersecting privilege. Cisgender privilege, housed privilege, financial privilege, non-disabled privilege, neurotypical privilege; and most of us also benefit from straight privilege and white privilege.
And since we hold inclusion and belonging as important values, we have had to educate ourselves…
Below you'll see an accounting of our 2021 commitments as well as our progress since starting out on this journey (you'll also find links to our previous statement at the bottom of this page).

We hope you'll take a moment to read it because at the center of this journey is YOU.

→ You can also listen along in the below series of podcast episodes with anti-oppression business strategist & inclusive leadership coach Nadi Fantastic, where we take stock of how we’re doing.

SAFE BRAVE SPACE

Our 2021 Commitment:

We commit to a community free of racism and discrimination. We want to make it clear that we have a zero tolerance policy for racist clients or community members. This community strives to be a safe place for people of all backgrounds and experiences, and we will remove anyone whose language or conduct is discriminatory.

Our first email in support of Black Lives Matter yielded some responses that didn’t align with our anti-racist values, and those people have been removed from our email list and our Facebook community.
We have added Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice language to all of our program contracts and the community rules for our Facebook groups.

WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED:

We now include in our contracts a clause that clearly describes our Anti-Racist intentions. We reserve the legal right to remove people from our programs who spread hate speech or commit microaggressions and are unwilling to listen and learn to respect fellow community members.
When a Facebook post that included harmful language was brought to our attention, we thanked the person harmed for notifying us; we removed it immediately, and explained to the person who posted why it was removed.

ROOM TO GROW:

We commit to the creation of a Community Code of Conduct which we will include in the footer of all of our webpages, Facebook groups and online course platforms – this way the members of our community are clear on our values and know what to expect when they are in our online spaces.
While we have heard little direct feedback from community members about not feeling safe, we know this doesn’t mean that all our community members actually feel safe.
In alignment with our values, we will share a survey inviting our community to offer feedback so that we can become aware of any missed opportunities to create safety and belonging.
We commit to continuing our work in an effort to make people feel comfortable coming to us for support if they need it. However, we recognize our pattern of solution has been to center our actions on the offender and we have room to support the person who was harmed more comprehensively (this is an area where we are actively creating a system to support everyone). This theme is continued in our Accountability section below.

OUTREACH

Our 2021 Commitment:

We commit to using our platform for change. Our anti-racist values will lead the way in our decisions to form partnerships, invite guests to our podcast, and promote offerings. Beyond our own programming, this will include resources shared on our Facebook page, speaking engagement requests that Brian accepts, and opportunities that we pass on to you.

We will ensure that any platform or organization where Brian guest teaches is offering 50% of teaching slots to BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ or disabled individuals. If an organization isn’t there yet, Brian will recommend alternate speakers from different demographics to take his spot.

WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED:

As of February 9, 2022, we have released 58 episodes of Brian’s podcast, Brian Breaks Character. 19 out of those 58 episodes (or 32.8%) have featured at least one guest from a historically under-resourced group.

ROOM TO GROW:

Sometimes we got so excited about having Brian teach somewhere that we moved too quickly and made assumptions about their speaker make-up… or worse, simply forgot. So, we commit to making the ask for the demographic breakdown of an organization's teachers and guests part of our standard operating procedure.

MONEY TALKS

Our 2021 Commitment:

We commit to giving our money to businesses owned by BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ or disabled individuals as much as possible. This can be challenging when we are working with larger companies like payment processors, who may not have many competitors. We expect this goal in particular to grow and evolve, so we’ve decided to be as data-driven as possible in this arena and start with a focus on our vendors. These are the small independent companies that we pay to do contract work for us – designing, copywriting, video editing, etc. We reviewed our 2020 finances and only 6.8% of the money we paid to contractors in 2020 went to BIPOC-owned businesses. We are not happy about that.

We have a lot of room to grow in this area, so our goal is for 20% of our payments to vendors to go to BIPOC-owned businesses by the end of 2021.

WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED:

In 2020, only 6.8% of our contractor expenditures went to businesses owned by members of historically under-resourced groups, and we aimed to increase this percentage to 20%. In 2021, we raised this percentage to 22.7%, exceeding our goal by almost 3%.

ROOM TO GROW:

This proved to be an incredibly challenging task and although we did accomplish this short-term goal, our work is far from over. We want to create room in this space for business owners with a greater variety of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. However, we quickly learned that our network is overwhelmingly white, we believe it’s important that we find different candidates to offer these opportunities to when they come up.

And to be honest, we are still figuring this out. Right now hiring around here includes scouring the internet, deep dives into Instagram, Indeed, and UpWork trying to find these businesses. It doesn’t always work.
We commit to amplifying businesses of entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds. We are often in need of copywriters, social media specialists, video editors, podcast producers, graphic designers, marketing specialists, web designers – truly anyone who supports companies or actors. And our community members ask for referrals all the time! If this is you or someone you know, we would love your help in growing our network. We would love to add these businesses to our resource database so that the next time we need to hire someone (or someone in our sphere asks us!), we can easily connect the dots.

Please reach out to Haelee@brianpatacca.com with any referrals. Thank you in advance for helping us to diversify this space and our reach!

ACCOUNTABILITY

Our 2021 Commitment:

We commit to an open door policy for anyone moved to express concerns about our execution of these DEIJ policies. For instance, when we originally reached out to our email list about Black Lives Matter, it was brought to our attention by a BIPOC Facebook group member that we neglected to share our commitment in our social media spaces. This taught us that members of our Facebook communities are not always on our email list; this was an oversight on our part and we will now make sure our messaging goes out through all channels. We want to hear your feedback.

We will make mistakes, and we hope these errors will help us learn to do better in the future.

We want our BIPOC members to thrive here without extra pressure to hold us accountable. To be clear: we do not expect our BIPOC community members to do the labor to educate us (but are open to hearing from you!). We as a team commit to doing this work, and ask the other white members of this community to do the work with us. We are open to feedback from anyone and everyone.

WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED:

We have had several students reach out concerned about what their experience will be in our programs, and whether they will feel that they belong. We are aware that BIPOC students are seeing the whiteness of our spaces – and we want to ensure that it is not problematic. We agree with them; we are on a journey to diversify our community and we are aware that it is going to take time.
We have also had multiple actors “in the third act of their careers” reach out to us with concerns that they do not see themselves reflected in our marketing materials. In these cases, we responded with our successful students in that age bracket who appear on the podcast and on our YouTube channel.
While we cannot speak to the experience of our students from historically under-resourced groups, we thought we should offer you a chance to hear from them in their own voices. Below you'll find a selection of podcast episodes featuring former students sharing their experiences within our programs.

ROOM TO GROW

We always have room to grow. This thing you’re reading right now is our ongoing commitment to growth; we continue to lay the groundwork to show up when we receive feedback that may not be positive.

DIVERSITY

Our 2021 Commitment:

We commit to fostering diversity in our programs. Team BKP created our DEIJ Scholarship to encourage diverse enrollment and provide opportunity to individuals who self-identify with racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, sexual orientations, and/or disabilities who have been historically overlooked in the entertainment industry.

We dedicate 5% of all tuition received to our fund for BIPOC, Disabled, and/or LGBTQIA+ actors. We open up applications twice a year (July and January) for scholarships up to $200 offered on a first come, first served basis until the fund is depleted.

WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED

We launched our scholarship program to support diverse enrollment and now offer $200 scholarships to all eligible students that apply.
We have enrolled 23 students in programs with our scholarship fund as of April 28, 2022.

ROOM TO GROW

This was a moment of learning for us, as we realized that bi-annual enrollment limits potential students. Also, since we did not reach our goal of awarded scholarships during our first application period, we modified our scholarships to not only offer rolling enrollment in all programs, but applications are now open year-round. We encourage applicants to apply anytime they are considering one of our programs.
We commit to creating an anonymous feedback loop and survey so that we can hear from scholarship recipients who decided not to enroll in one of our programs and improve this process.
We commit to doing our best to decrease any barriers that may prevent people from accessing needed support therefore we have simplified the process to apply, accept and put to use any scholarship.
Our scholarship program was previously know as DEIJ Scholarships & Reparations. We have since learned that reparations are distinct from scholarship monies, so we will refrain from using this language moving forward.

LANGUAGE

Our 2021 Commitment:

We commit to being intentional with our language, because it matters. We did a deep dive on our materials and wherever possible removed instances of language that we now understand to be offensive. We tell you this to assure you that we realize honesty is important during this process, and we want to be held accountable for our mistakes. We would hate for these errors to be quietly corrected without understanding the lesson that comes with them, and we apologize for our ignorance in the past. We are learning, and we commit to do better.

WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED:

We told you we would focus on being intentional with our language, and this has been a point of great focus for us. We spend a LOT of time editing the things we say.

ROOM TO GROW:

As we grow our awareness, we are constantly finding better ways to say what we mean. Inclusive language will continue to be a goal for us; language evolves with culture and we believe our culture is evolving.

ONGOING EDUCATION

Our 2021 Commitment:

We commit to educate ourselves so that we are able to continue adapting and growing our understanding of our own prejudices and systemic racism. We hope to use what we learn to make more thoughtful choices as a business within the entertainment industry, and act from a more informed place in the stewardship of an inclusive community.

WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED:

We committed to ongoing education and invested in a self-directed Equity-Centered Coaching program with Trudi LeBron.

ROOM TO GROW:

The year started, we had the tools, but we never came up with a plan. We’ve learned how important it is in our company to make this work inherent in our ongoing schedule – things move at a fast pace around here. We didn’t make it a priority to schedule this education, and it didn’t happen.
For the year 2022, we have signed up for our whole team to work with Nadi Fantastic, an Anti-Oppression Business Strategist & Inclusive Leadership Coach. They work with teams in an ongoing fashion and plan to create a custom workshop for our team. We look forward to learning with them and expanding our understanding and our goals.

ACCESSIBILITY

Accessibility was included as part of our Ongoing Education in 2021. Our Ongoing Education taught us that accessibility deserves its own focus.

Our 2021 Commitment:

Thanks to Christine Bruno, a disability educator and guest on Brian’s podcast, we have recently begun to learn about how to make our online programs and content more accessible to blind/low vision and deaf or hard of hearing actors. We commit to a complete accessibility overhaul of 33% of our course offerings by the end of 2021.

How to Be a Disability Ally in the Entertainment Biz with Christine Bruno

WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED

We began to include captioning and transcripts for all new coaching call recordings for #agentgoals, Actor Operating System and Audition Magnet. All newer podcast episodes are now captioned on YouTube, and we now offer transcriptions of podcast episodes on our website. We have recently completed the process of captioning all lesson videos for #agentgoals.

ROOM TO GROW

We committed to a complete accessibility overhaul of 33% of our programs by the end of 2021. We have not completed this task, and this was a real learning moment for us. After speaking with several accessibility specialists, it was brought to our attention that our approach to disability issues was very skin-deep. It seemed straightforward that accessibility meant to make PDFs readable by screen-readers and add captions to all of our videos in our learning platform.
But truly coaching the community in a way that actively supports our disabled community members requires a much larger conversation and a lot more education for us. We hope to learn more about this in 2022, while continuing to complete the technical accessibility modifications that are already in progress.

If you'd like to learn more, below we've included some really helpful takeaways that we learned.

OUR HOPE

We are grateful for our community – this group is made up of beautiful and kind individuals from all backgrounds.

For those of us with privilege, we hope we can embrace humility and use this privilege to create a more just version of this little corner of the world.
For those of us who encounter barriers to success in our society: we are grateful to have you as a part of our community and we look forward to continuing the work of making this a safe, brave space to show up and be artists together.

Our plan means nothing without action. We intend for this to be both an immediate promise and a living document that progresses along with our world. We look forward to hearing your feedback, and we promise to keep you updated as these commitments shift and grow.

In solidarity,

SAFE BRAVE SPACE

OUTREACH

MONEY TALKS

Our 2021 Commitment:

ACCOUNTABILITY

Our 2021 Commitment:

DIVERSITY

Our 2021 Commitment:

LANGUAGE

Our 2021 Commitment:

ONGOING EDUCATION

ACCESSIBILITY

OUR PREVIOUS ANTI-RACISM & ANTI-BIAS STATEMENTS

OUR PREVIOUS ANTI-RACISM &
ANTI-BIAS STATEMENTS