Commitment to Anti–Racism
Waterwell is dedicated to the continuous work of being a company that is anti-racist and anti-oppressive.
The legacy of racism and identity-driven discrimination has a long, stubborn, and profoundly damaging history in the United States. At Waterwell, we are dedicated to creating a workplace where artists, students, faculty, administrators, and producers can bring their full selves to their creative work. We strive to be a place where everyone is not only supported but welcomed to bring the full complexity and idiosyncrasy of their identity and how it has shaped their experience of the world to everything that they do.
As an employer, we will continue to build and evaluate day-to-day and long-term practices that are rigorous and sensitive to the needs of people of the global majority. We believe that the work of eradicating anti-racism and anti-Blackness from the ideology and material practices in our industry requires deliberate intention and sustained focus. We also stand firmly for the absence of any gender discrimination and discrimination against people who are LGBTQIA+ in our company, and while we believe that there are many areas in which this work is importantly distinct from anti-racism work, there is often intersectionality to recognize and integrate.
We recognize that there is immense harm caused by the way that racialized power dynamics can prevent authentic communication, and therefore, true collaboration and equitable work relationships. One of the cornerstone goals of our anti-racism and anti-oppression work is to create truly candid, constructive, caring communication in the workplace between everyone we work with.
We also believe that what our industry considers a living wage is highly suspect at best, and that low wages are a fundamental factor in the harmful exploitation, racial disparity and myriad manifestations of inequality that pervade our field. We are doggedly committed to imagining and enacting ways that Waterwell’s budget and organizational structure can change to pay teachers, artists, and staff wages that better reflect the scale/scope of their jobs and relate to the cost of living in NYC.
Every year in August, we will create an Accountability Report that transparently outlines any anti-racism work we have done in the past year, a pay equity analysis for all of the people we have employed, and a demographic breakdown of the racial and gender identity of who is working at the company and on Waterwell’s board. This will be available on our website, and we welcome feedback and critique by emailing info@waterwell.com or any of us directly, or anonymously via this form.