In this episode, Katya talks to Tom Spurgin, the audience development manager for the London Philharmonia. His work around expanding the audience and opening the doors to a traditional, established and admittedly elitist institution not only to new ears but also to artists who have previously felt excluded is truly inspiring! We chat about starting the inclusion group in the Philharmonia, their first project, which reaped amazing success and the following long term initiatives involving the most diverse cohort of applicants to ever apply to the London Philharmonia to date!
You can find Tom on LinkedIn at
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-spurgin/
More about the London Philharmonia -
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Enjoy the conversation
Transcript -
Katya 0:00
Hello, My name is Katya Veleva and this ischanging the atmosphere, a podcast about changemakers and how they did it.
As always, to look at the illustration thatcomes with this episode head to the blush cloud website or follow the link inthe description.
Today I am excited to speak to Tom Spurgin
Tom is the Audience Development Manager atPhilharmonia Orchestra in London and has served as the Co-Chair of theirEquality Group since 2018. Alongside his audience research, community work, andorganisational lobbying, he manages the Orchestra’s flagship Artist inResidence programme to diversify the Philharmonia’s programme, artists andaudiences with innovative cross-arts collaborations. Over the last year, theOrchestra have been working with House of Absolute to create a dance film thatwill be completed later in the year.
Outside of his work with the Philharmonia, Tomis completing a part-time PhD with the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds, andManchester Collective, looking into audience development and how to gathertruly diverse audience in more classical and privileged settings. Beyond music,Tom sits on the Board of Trustees for The Spring Arts & Heritage Centre andBy Jove Theatre Company.
Prior to all of this, Tom managed an artistdevelopment programme that brought together young musicians from across grime,hip-hop, RnB, and electronic music.
I cannot wait to speak to Tom, his work isbrilliant, and in the short chat that we have had prior to this, I actually gotgoosebumps hearing about the Philharmonia’s residency program.
Enjoy the conversation.
Hi, Tom, welcome. Thank you so much for beinghere.
Tom 0:02
Thank you very much for having me. Iappreciate it.
Katya 0:05
So I've been talking you up a little bit. Sobefore we start talking about all the wonderful things that we're doing, Iasked every guest, about an embarrassing trend that they may have participatedin, just to bring you down to earth a little bit. And to make you feel better,I'll share my own as well.
Tom 0:20
Amazing, thank you.
Katya :21I, myself have spent more than a year, maybe several years withonly having a single line of hairs as eyebrows in my youth. It was terrible.That's Eastern Europe in the 19th and early aughts for you. And despite that,I'm still here and surviving.
Tom 0:44
Good for you. You've done it.
Katya 0:45
Yes, I have. Do you have something like that?Do you have an embarrassing trend that you've participated in?
Tom 0:52
When I was in my final year of senior school,it was a time where all boys thought they should have long hair. And you canhave whatever hair you want, like do whatever, my hair should not be long. I'vehad to go through basically, it used to come down to my leg below my shoulders.And it was long and wavy. And it was kind like...so in a way it was lovely. Butalso it was at the time that I had braces, my skin was really bad. I wasn'tvery confident in myself. So my sense of style was different to what it is now.And it was just disgusting. And now there are no photos of me between the agesof 15 to 17 anywhere, because I've removed all of them.
Katya 1:42
You've taken care of them. Yeah, I still havea few with my single-hair eyebrows, just to remind me.
Tom 1:50
Sensible. Very, very sensible,
Katya 1:52
Well, brilliant, even though at one point youhad longer hair than you should have. You're here today and you're doing someamazing, amazing work with the Philharmonia. Before we get into that work, canyou tell me a little bit more about your life, before starting the inclusiongroup there? And the residency project? What did your everyday look like?
Tom 2:14
Well, my everyday has been relatively similarfor the last few years, because I've had a lot of time with the Philharmonia,based in this contract, before that, I worked with a charity that worked withyoung people bringing together musicians from king of HipHop, R&B &Grime backgrounds, and getting them to work together, communicate, kind of seewhat was interesting about each of their own worlds. And for that my every day,like the process sounds really cool. Like, hey, yeah, bring loads of youngmusicians together. But it was just spreadsheets, spreadsheets, and loads morespreadsheets and budgets, and going into the office and sorting through, Godknows how many emails. Basically just organizing every last thing, any personthat works in events, or any kind of project management. I guess we understandthat you just have to think of absolutely everything that could ever go right,but also go wrong, and kind of prepare for that stuff. So my everyday would beemails, calls, working with teachers, which working with, like youth clubleaders, venues to work towards usually one day, and then that one day wouldcome and go, and then you just be on to the next thing.
Katya 3:35
Do you get a little bit triggered when peoplesay something about attention to detail then?
Tom 3:39
I do? Yeah, actually, I used to be and stillam, like the proofreader for most of the organizations that I've worked for.Because my entire working life has been about going through every single tinyaspect of every document that we send to people and basically making sure thatwe get all of our stuff right, so that when we get there, everyone's able to dotheir jobs.
Katya 4:07
To me, it sounds like there's some amazingorganizational skills going on, which is very, very helpful in whatever youwant to create change. So was there a specific moment that you knew that you'regoing in this direction that you're going to be organizing this diversitygroup? Was there a ha moment?
Tom 4:26
It kind of happened for me that there was agroup of staff at the orchestra at the time who were talking about doing aPride project. It was led by an old colleague of mine, Patrick, who had said, thereare a lot of queer people in our ensemble and in our management team. Why don'twe just go ahead and do something and he put it to the then chief exec, and Ithink she was a bit scared by the concept and didn't really know what to dowith it. So kind of scrambled around And a bit and then said, Okay, well Tomkind of works on that community project. He's gay so he can be involved. Andthis person kind of works in this project, so they can also be involved. Andshe just put us all in a room together and said, what do we need to do? Andbasically what we as a staff need to do so that she doesn't have to, kind ofmake decisions on it. And that's where the quality group came from.
Katya Speaker 5:23
It may be worth talking a little bit moreabout the Philharmonia and how things generally are, because I think peoplealso often think, whenever you're talking about arts, music performance, thatseems to be an inclusive space, especially there's a lot of queer peopleinvolved, and so on. So what's the need? Why are we even talking about this?
Tom 5:45
Classical music can be that space, andhistorically has been that space where people that would kind of be authored bysociety, do find a home in music. But recently, it's kind of turned into moreof a well off white middle class, generally older people, generallyconservative voting audiences that become a part of that world. But also,because of education cuts, and funding cuts to education, people being able toperform at the level required of symphony orchestras are generally also whitefrom really wealthy backgrounds. So there's not really that much representationof the UK population, within a lot of the orchestral ensembles in the UK, thatwithin the Philharmonia, until recently, we had, I think, one black woman, inthe whole organization,
Katya 6:47
How many people are in the organization?
Tom 6:49
There are 80 players, and there are 50 membersof staff
Katya 6:52
That's 130 people. 1 woman.
Tom 6:56
And we're based in London. And there was oneblack person in the whole organization, we still don't have any black playersin our orchestra. We have had black players in the past, but they have come andgone. Often because of their own reasons, but I think the pattern is, ifthere's a person that's slightly different from everyone else, they tend not tostay with the orchestra for a long time, which is a risk to us bothartistically that we're not, we therefore won't be able to produce the, likethe best art that we can, because we won't have the right people to do it. Butalso reputationally, we really will be seen as a really exclusive place. Andclassical music is seen as an exclusive thing. But my key thing is that itshould be a resource that's open to everyone whether or not you like the musicthat they usually play the scale of those players within the ensemble. Ifthere's any kind of music that interests you, they would be able to, like dosomething interesting with that. And I find that kind of creative sense is whatis needed within our ensembles that we don't really focus on that much at themoment.
Katya 8:07
I love that you're coming in from thisbackground of working with grime and hip hop and r&b. Because my kind ofexperience in my life is with people who like music. There's rarely ever thiskind of separation. Yes, there are different styles. But when you have theappreciation for this particular kind of art doesn't really matter. Lizzo isclassically trained, yeah, plays the flute, right?
Tom 8:31
The only person that's ever been able to makethe flute call. I hate the flute. It is my most hated instrument. But I do loveLizzo.
Katya 8:40
We're not gonna show this to Lizzo. We'regonna keep this away from her.
Tom 8:44
Okay.
Katya 8:44
I don't have specific feelings for the fluteon its own. But in Lizzo's hands, I worship it. So I think we may have an issuehere, but we'll be okay. So you were put in this room after working in thisparticular organization, which celebrates music, but seems to be taking it intokind of more and more of an exclusive level. And your work before that was alsoinvolved in expanding your audience, right? You're an audience developmentmanager. Can you tell me a little bit more about that part of your job?
Tom 9:14
Yeah. So I was brought on originally withinthe organization for this contract, which started in 2018, to work on a projectcalled the Virtual Orchestra that went to our residency centers around the UK.So as well as London we perform regularly in Bedford, Leicester, Canterbury, inBasingstoke. And we were taking a project to each of those locations that wouldpitch up in a tent or in a shopping center, or wherever we could find and havean installation there for six weeks. It was free and open to the public, tobasically get to meet more people from those locations. Because in each ofthose residences, our audiences are only representative of a certain very smalldemographic of the communities there. So we wanted to see what would be neededto be able to change that kind of the representation of both our audiences, butalso what we would need to do as an organization and how we would need tochange to be more relevant to those groups of people.
It was originally designed as a digitalinstallation that you basically wander through, and you can see an orchestraperforming around you and like you stand closer to the violins, you can hearthe violins more. So it's both audio and visual. And that was virtual realityas well. And it was a big, digital push of, Hey, isn't digital cool, we can usethis to break down all the barriers and boundaries to classical music. And itwas originally considered as a way of kind of taking great art to people, whichis an interesting and like, a relatively good thing to do, but only if it'spart of, or in my opinion, only if it's part of a much wider ecology of what'shappening in the arts that, yes, you can say, this is what we've deemed to begreat art.
But at the same time, we should be listeningto what the people coming to it say, that project that started as thisdemocratizing thing actually became a process of understanding other people'sexperiences, understand their own understanding, but also their engagement withpublicly funded culture and personal culture at the same time.
So I led that project, and there's a lot ofthe community consultation around it, it was one of those really weird thingsthat I was really, I felt really young when I started in, which in a way wasreally good, because a lot of the community groups we were talking to, wereeither quite young, or a lot older. So it felt like there was a bit more of aconnection in that way that I could say, I'm kind of new to classical music,too, and kind of don't really know what's going on, should we like work thisout together?
Katyar 11:57
It’s a tricky place to be, facilitating thisdialogue between an audience that's not an audience yet, essentially. And thisinstitution which has such gravitas, such history, and a weight to the opinionof what grade that is. So it couldn't have been easy.
Tom 12:15
No, it's really tough. And mentally, it'squite tough as well. It's quite draining. It's quite exhausting. Thatconstantly being a translator between worlds that have, in many cases, nounderstanding of what the other world does.
Katya 12:31
So you're in this room. Someone's put you alltogether, there needs to be a Pride project going on. What happened next, wasthe first step to moving forward with the group itself?
Tom 12:43
Because of the work that I've done with avirtual orchestra, and that was all based on communities and partners, theorganization was starting to understand they couldn't do everything on its own.So being in London, we said, okay, well, there will be lots of organizationsworking with queer people, and working with both queer audiences, queer artistsand queer communities. Let's go out and speak to them. So originally, this isnow talking about a specific project rather than the equality group. But thisproject kind of helped the equality group get going.
We went to the Raise Collective, which is agroup of queer artists and producers based, I think, in London, but they mightactually now spread wider across the UK. So also the Cocoa Butter Club, who arequeer collective of artists of color, particularly in burlesque and cabaret. Sowe went to those two organizations and said, we're a symphony orchestra, whatwould you do? Like we've got some money, which is given to us by the governmentto do this kind of thing and to do work. That's interesting and innovative. Doyou want to work on a project? And they went, yeah, okay, cool. And I think itwas the connection of me being a queer person going into queer space, saying,I'm already in a very non queer space that is starting to be much moreaccessible and friendly to queer people. Do you want to come in and help thisorganization along that process? They were really excited by it.
We worked together for a year trying to pulltogether this project, and lobbying the organization to actually then let ushave this money. So the organization gets 2 million pounds a year from the ArtsCouncil, and that's publicly subsidized. So through taxes and lottery payersmoney, but that's only about 20% of our annual income. So trying to ask for10,000 pounds to do a project. Sounds a lot to me, but to that organization isactually a very small amount-ish. So we were lobbying for that money.
When they eventually gave it to us. We thenjust spent, I think it was two weeks with musicians and queer artists. in aroom saying, what should we do? How do we make an event that pushes theorganization forward and create a partnership that pushes us forward? We endedup with this late night queer cabaret, based on, we're doing a Weimar Germanyseries in the south bank at the time. So it's kind of already queer connectionsto it. Yeah. And we did it as cabaret. And it was free, it was open, it was thequeerest audience we have ever had at the Philharmonia there, about 400 peoplethere, which we did not expect at all. And it was something like fourmusicians, and six queer artists, which was the most fun that I've ever had atwork. But that kind of initial project with Raise and Cocoa Butter Club, thenkind of proved to the organization that that concept could work.
Actually, yes, discussions with artists andcreating something new is as valuable as going and performing a work thatsomeone wrote 300 years ago. Once we had proof of concept, we could moveforward and say, Okay, great, the quality group helped to create this project.So they've obviously done something right. Now, as well as doing projects, letus help with strategy and with communications and less, basically bring thespecialisms and understanding that we have of lots of different individualsfrom across the organization, who queer disabled people of color, from London,from outside of London, from working class backgrounds, we have a lot of livedexperience that we can offer this organization to kind of help move it forwardbeyond just projects.
Katya 16:41
Amazing! Putting together something like thatcan’t be easy. But you said, the first step was reaching out to these groupswas that you already knew of their existence, and then you started lobbying forthe money? I'm really interested in the practical steps there. How does one gotowards lobbying for an amount to to sponsor a project by them?
Tom 17:03
It's quite difficult. It depends what organizationyou're in, I guess, and depends how receptive they are, to try new things. AndI think, at this time, so that would have been around January, February 2019,the organization was financially struggling, but was on kind of a high from thevirtual orchestra, and was doing a bit more interesting stuff in the way ofprogramming, that people were kind of open to trying something new. And I justasked, I put together a budget, and I said, I've worked out that it will costthis much to do this. This is what it will bring to the organization I just didthe project pitch. So for budget for forecast of when that money will be spent,why we're doing it, who will be attracted, what we'll get at the end of it,what the outcomes will be, who will be able to basically sell this to and say,Look, this is a great project, now fund it. So it would bring in more money tothe organization in the long term. And I just made the case, so difficult forthem to say no to because of what the organization exists to do.
I think a lot of arts organizations andspecifically orchestras have really grand missions and visions and differentvalues that they kind of put on their website and say, oh, we're innovative, orwe champion change, and we care about x, y, Zed, but actually, they don'treally do much of that stuff. So being able to say this one project will dothis, which is your mission, it will do this, which is your vision, and it willdo this, which is all of your values. I think I just guilted them into it. Ithink that's honestly it was that they were like bloody hell Thomas, put someeffort in here.
Katya 18:57
You did what you did best, right? You knew howto sort out details. You knew how to manage a project. And you just went aheadand did that. And I'm thinking maybe because of your experience of thattranslator role that you had you knew what was the image he knew about thesevalues and mission that were out there. And you could just immediately hook onto them, and work with that, to convince them?
Tom 19:24
Yeah,definitely. And that's knowing what'shappening inside the organization, but also outside as well. This was at thetime when the Arts Council were just starting to publicly talk about their next10 year strategy. So the art sector who were mainly like one of the biggestfunders is the Arts Council. They were just hearing all of these sneak peeks ofwhat the Arts Council were going to focus on for the next 10 years. So youcould say okay, well, our vision and mission is this by looking internally. Ithelps us in this way, but also it's going to help us in the future because itmaps on everything that the arts council was talking about.
I guess something that I didn't say is thesupporters that from within the organization, I kind of got onside. Within thatprocess. I remember someone once said to me, it's the HIPPOs. It's the HighestPaid Person In the Organization or something like that.
Katya
It’s a Hippo. I love it.
Tom
Yeah. And they're like, just get them onboard, like if you can, whoever the closest Hippo is, to your reach, get themand get them on site and like, focus on their attention on this project, sothat they care about it just as much as you do. So I did that. And within thatgroup of people that then cared about it was me to senior leaders, the equalitygroup people.
Katya 20:56
Did you work on the hippos before your projector better after?
Tom 21:01
I think I included two of them. No, I includedone in the process of the project pitch to be like, Can you look over this and helpme get it to the stage. So they felt they had some kind of input into it. Andthe other one, I brought in with the project pitch, and said, This is what I'mgoing to do for the rest of the senior managers in the chief exec. Do you thinkyou could be on board with this?
Katya 21:29
Brilliant, that's amazing. You were randomlyput together in a room and asked to do something for Pride. And then thatturned into this cabaret project, which was open and free for people to see,and had an audience of 400. Results. Brilliant. And that was successful, youhad your proof of concept. And then what?
Tom 21:50
Well, then it kind of just exploded into lotsof different things that the equality group started focusing on strategy,started focusing on other projects, was looking kind of cross organizationallyat different departments. But the thing that that particular project with thequeer groups, kind of ignited, was then this step towards the orchestra havingan artist in residence, which was kind of a dream, like, the thing that I lovemost is bringing in different artists from different backgrounds, whetherthat's, like social backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, or just artisticbackgrounds, and seeing what happens when you give them new mediums and new artforms to work with. And from that project with Raise and Cocoa Butter Club, wemanaged to get the orchestra to sign off on at least three years worth offunding for a project that had five times the amount of funding as the queercabaret and do a call out specifically for people that have felt offended byclassical music ensembles. And don't feel represented in our work or ouraudiences. And it I kind of didn't believe that it was happening because it waslike, I think we put together the job description, and it was my line managers,me. And then Yasmin, who at the time was my co chair of the equality group withme, we put together this job description like, this is the absolute dream. Weknow people won't say yes to this, but let's put it in and see what happens.
Katya 23:30
I love this. I absolutely love this. Just gofor the thing you actually want. Yeah, say it out loud. Don't be scared for it.Yeah. Brilliant.
Tom 23:39
And somehow they went for it, which we didn'treally understand. I guess it was because the project was so good. And we'dobviously thought about it so much. But that, like, there were a couple ofthings. They said, Okay, well, that is actually quite a lot of money. So let'sreduce that a little bit. And that might be too far for us to say at thispoint. So let's change that language slightly. But ultimately, that call out inI think, September 2020. And in the month that it was open, we had 368applications. Whoa, right, of which I think it's 40% were from black Britishartists living in London. 40% of those 368 are black British artists living inLondon. And that has never ever happened to our orchestra before. And unless
Katya 24:33
You have one woman of color, before that -one.
Tom 24:38
Right? Yeah. And that happened. Oh my god, itis actually working like people care. Obviously we sent it out to differentpeople. We thought about the partners that we were working with. We went out tocommercial music groups as well as standard charitable ones like orchestras. Wewent out through community organizations, but also we One representative of theUK in terms of the number of disabled artists that were applying, but it wasstill something like 12% of people that applied, identified as disabled, whichwas way more representatives than the organisation had been, or any kind ofapplications have been up to that point. And 15% of people that applied werebisexual. As I, I don't know what we've done to specifically attract bisexualartists to this call out. But it worked. So it became then the most diverse andRepresentative cohort of people, have you ever applied for anything at theorchestra?
Katya 25:38
I get goosebumps again, like the first time Ispoke to you, I was completely thrilled about this. And then I've been tellingmy friends about this, because I'm so excited to talk to you. And I'm stillgetting so excited because this is such a big deal. It's a huge deal for aninstitution of this scale to open up in this way. And in a way that people willrespond Oh, come come towards them. Because in my experience coming from asimilarly elitist atmosphere of architecture, there is always the stock butlike, but there aren't women in architecture, there are black people that do.And, again, whenever I've worked in or talked about, or listened toorganizations, for example, led specifically by women, architects, they don'thave that problem. And I've heard them say, well, I've never had this problem,I've never had an issue, because my desk is constantly covered by CVS of femalearchitects. So maybe there's something about the coal, there's something abouthow you open this up. And you've obviously managed to do it in an amazing way.
Tom 26:44
Thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. Asyou were saying that bit, it reminds me the former chief exec of Stonewall dida speech once, and I was in a room and she basically said, nothing will happenin equality and diversity until you have a lesbian in charge. That is the onlyway to make it work. And everyone laughed. But actually looking back, like theChair of our orchestra at this time, was a lesbian. And she really cared aboutthis project. And she championed it so much. She's not the chair anymore. We'vegot now, another amazing Chair. But before she had that power, she cared aboutit, she was really engaged in the original queer project. And ultimately, yeah,having a lesbian at the top of the organization. So it helps.
Katya 27:37
I love this prescription. Can we describe somedoctors now? A stem? Yeah, and give it up?
Tom 27:42
I would like one lesbian, please, for myorganization, right at the top,
Katya 27:47
At least one.
Tom 27:49
Yeah, at least.
Katya 27:50
Adopt a lesbian? And then she's gonna, she'sgonna be fine. So the equality group started going, you have the successfulproject, and then you managed to convince them to sponsor this residencyprogram for three years? And you're in your second year, I believe, now?
Tom 28:05
Yeah. So after we had the huge number ofapplications, we had to actually increase the panel size of the people choosingbecause there were too many for us to look through in the time that we'veallotted ourselves, which in itself was great, because we then got to look atthe artists and go, actually, because there's such a high representation ofblack British artists, we've only got one black British person on the panel,let's increase the representation there and bring in two more people. We had adisabled panelist. We then had to find someone who was neurodiverse, becausethere was a high representation of neuro-diversity in the applications.Basically, we got every representative on the panel as possible to look at avery representative group of applications. And we managed to just about get itdown to 11 that we then took through to interview and there were probably fiveor six that we could have just very easily gone - This position is yours,you'll do incredible things. I think what made me really proud at that pointwas that we chose a collective of women and marginalized genders, the majorityare women of color. And they're multidisciplinary artists. So across dance,music, visual art, basically, whatever you think of House of Absolute can doit. And we appointed the House of Absolute because of everything they stoodfor. The quality of work that they created was incredible. And we knew that,like we could put them in front of the orchestra and the orchestra would go,Hmm, okay, great. Yeah, we're excited to work with this group of people. Andbecause it happened over the first year of lockdown, we weren't 100% sure whatwas going to happen over that first year.
So we kept it open at the start and we said Tothe artists is just a year long program, we'll see what happens. And then we'lldo a separate call out in year two. But because such a lot of stuff had changedin that year, a couple of months ago, we actually decided to reappoint House ofAbsolute for the next year running as well. So they've now go, they will havebeen artists in residence from October 2020, all the way through until July 22.And the organization would have put in around 100,000 pounds into that group ofartists.
Katya 30:36
You can clap here. It's necessary.
Tom 30:38
Yeah, I am so proud of the organization fordoing that. And saying that amount of money is again, huge to me, and to thekind of the work that I do. It’s still not a lot for organizations of thissize, like we still have a long, long way to go. That's kind of what could bespent on one concert that maybe like a couple of high profile artists willperform at and the audience will be the standard audience you'd expect.
Katya 31:08
I love your sense of like, keep going for morea little bit more a little bit. Yeah, keep not doing because, I mean, this ishow it works. You're hacking at it and keep hacking there you get somewhere,because revolution sounds sexy, but it could be painful. And it could be veryhard. And it won't necessarily get you where you want to be. But gradual changeand continuing to push forward with things like that could be very much moresustainable in a way.
Tom 31:37
Exactly. And I think I've gone through thatprocess of Revolution, Revolution, Revolution, to understanding, now withinthis particular organization, they are not ready for revolution, they stillneed it, it will be so much easier. And I personally think the organizationwill be much further ahead and much more sustainable if we were to take somereally massive steps to change stuff. But ultimately, the people in chargearen't ready for that. So you do have to do it in smaller, sometimes quiteaggravating steps.
Katya 32:11
It takes quite a lot of tact to be able to dothat. And you seem to have really honed that in, so good job.
Tom 32:16
Thank you very much. Virtual high five.
Katya 32:18
Well, no, we're live!
Tom 32:20
We can do an actual. I'm just so used to beingdistanced.
Katya 32:23
I know it's crazy. So what would you say wasthe hardest thing in that whole process?
Tom 32:29
I think we're going through the hardest thingright now, we just had to make a really difficult decision that theorganization had to decide to pause on the recording of House of Absolute’sfilm that was meant to be the final part of this year of their residency. Andbecause we're an arts organization, because we're a charity, and because ofCOVID, and all of the financial struggles, the cash flow just wasn't there tobe able to fund this film in the way that we wanted. So we've had to delay that.And that is a really, really, really difficult thing for me to process, thatwasn't a decision that I made. And I fought really hard against that decision.And it's also not something that House of Absolute wanted. And there's apotential reputational risk that we're now working really hard with House ofAbsolute to, so people can explain to them why that decision has been made andwhy things have had to be delayed. But when it's an organization, or aninstitution that is so old, and is so prone to making mistakes when trying todo this stuff. I think the people working directly on the project are reallyopen to listening and understanding when we get things wrong and saying okay, Ithink about how I've done that, or change the way that I go in future. So thereare multiple times that Julia, who's the lead of House of Absolute, has said tome, are you saying that just because I'm a dancer and a classical musician? Anddo you think that I don't know about it's not? Oh, ha. I hadn't consideredthat. Maybe? Yeah, you're right. Okay. I'm sorry. I think about that. Next timeI do that, like actually tell me offer it instead of just nicely calling meout. But it's like a process of listening, understanding, reflecting, changingyour actions, bringing everyone on into that space within the organizationwhere they feel able to get things wrong. That's the hardest part. And that'swhat we're still working on. And we haven't got right. And I don't think weexpected to get that right straightaway.
Katya 34:40
Yeah, that's not something we generally fosterin dialogue. It's not something that we kind of are taught to accept as part ofcollaboration to welcome and make comfortable space for disagreement to thenmove forward from that. And probably you're experienced with facilitating thatdialogue before in the virtual concert experience project will have helped youa lot to be able to do that.
Tom 35:04
Completely. And like huge shout outs to theRetired Caribbean Nurses Association of Bedford. They are the most incrediblegroup of human beings ever. But they were the first people to do that, to usthat kind of calling out process with the virtual orchestra where we reachedout to them and they said, Are you reaching out to us? Because we're black?Because we're retired. And because we're women. And this was in a meeting withthem, and I kind of just sat there went, yes, yeah, we are. So they were like,well, why are you doing that? I was like, well, personally, because we haven'tgot any black, older, women in our organization, and I think you have skillsets that we could learn from. Also, I think there are some concerts that youmight really enjoy. So you might get something from it. And maybe somethingamazing could happen in the future. But they were just brutally honest with usand like, called us out on language called as our own reasoning, why we werethere, called us out on everything. But now like some of those people are very,very, very close friends of mine, because we kind of had that process start, weactually haven't had a project with the retired Caribbean nurses yet. Becausethe right thing hasn't come along. But it's still a group of people that wekind of go to.
Katya 36:23
So would that be something that's next on thebooks for you? What would you like to be the next goal?
Tom 36:30
For the equality group, are you thinking?Well, we've just written the organization's next equality plan for the nextfive years. And there are some really, mostly really achievable targets inthere. But some really tough ones that we are lobbying quite hard within theorganization to make happen, which is ultimately the diversification of theboard. So as a charity, the board are the ones who are at the top and don'tmake day to day decisions, but make strategic decisions about where theorganization goes, where money should be spent. And our board is notrepresentative of the UK, London, anything other than like old white bankersand musicians at the moment. So we have a long way to go in that sense. Butwithin the equality action plan, we put in one tiny target, which I think willmake a huge amount of difference if we do actually get to reach this, which isthat a member of our community groups that we work with, in our residences. Sothat could be the retired Caribbean Nurses Association, it could be Bedfordopportunities for learning disabilities, it could be like any of the groupsthat we work with in our community projects, that one member will sit on theBoard of Trustees for the whole organization. And that's just like a tiny, tinysentence in this plan. That having someone who would be able to do that callingout and be able to represent voices that aren't there in that space, and make strategicdecisions with the organization. I think that could transform the way that theorganization moves forward. So that's what I'm hoping will happen in the nextyear. And what I'm going to put a lot of energy into doing.
Katya 38:19
I sincerely hope it works. I really do.
Tom 38:24
Thank you. Me too.
Katya 38:25
So what was a fun surprise along the way foryou?
Tom 38:30
How much my musicians really wanted to danceand really wanted to move, like putting them in a workshop with House ofabsolut has absolutely been quite gentle and kind of not asking them to do toomuch movement, because they weren't sure how they'd react. And that was becausewe'd said to them, we're not sure how the musicians will react. But by the endof the first workshop, all the musicians were like, when are you going to getus to dance like this is what we're here for. We really want to do this. Andthere's a video that will come out soon on our YouTube channels that kind oflooks behind the scenes at the process of creating this big work. And it's justa group of musicians and dancers having a really good time. In a hall. It wasone of the first times we met together in a room after lockdown too. Yeah,everyone just had a really good time.
Katya 39:21
Awesome. That was in a way ultimately what youstarted with one thing, getting artists together and just giving them adifferent medium and seeing what happens. Exactly. So who was the mostsupportive? Who were your biggest cheerleaders?
Tom 39:36
My husband. Not in work life. He's a theatredirector and academic, but he's the person that I will use to go home to nowkind of leave the front room and go up to his study and say, This is what'shappened in the day, am I doing the right thing? And he'll just talk me througheverything. So serious love to him. But otherwise my line managers theActually, over the course of this, there have been four, which is quite a lot.But Tim and Alex, who used to be my line managers, when this process started,was so, so, so supportive, but also, was understanding. Like the challenges andall of the hurdles that we'd have to jump over. Basically, I did some of thelegwork. And then they went and continued that lobbying at higher levels tomake sure it all happened. And then two new line managers, Rebecca and Shawnee,who've taken over from both of those people who just come in and, god yes, thissounds cool. Let's do it, and just kind of trusted both House of Absolute andme to kind of go on and do it well. So I think they are our biggest supporters.
Katya 40:46
Amazing. What would be the top learnings thatyou've taken out of that?
Tom 40:52
I guess it's about preparation, preparation,in terms of understanding why you want to do it, but also what benefit it wouldbring to the organization, but also preparation and managing of your ownexpectations about the time periods that it might take to do this, that when westarted, I think we had hoped that there would be a Philharmonia float in pride2018. And like they'd be performing, like Gloria Gaynor orchestralarrangements, and it would have been amazing. And that's right, that's still,it still would be amazing. But managing that expectation that ultimately thatwasn't going to happen straight away. And that we would have to do those smalliterative processes to help us get to the end goal. I think that would be mymain learning.
Katya 41:42
And so if you're addressing someone else whoalso wants to create some kind of change, and push for inclusion and diversity,what would be your advice to them?
Tom 41:52
Having a support network, I think is numberone, whether that's people within your organization, if you're able to do that,or outside, because it is draining. And when you're constantly fighting battles,sometimes organizations can be quite... that sometimes they just don't want tohear. And you have to continually bash your head against that wall, until thewall starts to break. It really takes it out on your mental health and yourability to do your work. So having a support network that you can go to andsay, I've had a rough day, can we just sit and like, not talk together, but bein the same space, whatever works for you. That would be number one. And Iguess also just looking at what other people have done, whether it's withinyour sector or outside of your sector, because in most cases, you will not bethe first person who's doing this. So there will be people that can help youand support you. And if you are the first person who's doing it in your sector,there will be people from other sectors that will be able to help.
Katya 42:56
Brilliant. I just love your spirit. And I haveno doubt you're going to go places with this because little by little This ishow, how it works and how it builds on and you've already done so much withstarting studying the group and then moving from one event to an artistresidency with this longevity that you already have. I can't wait to see theproject. And to be honest, I don't doubt that we're going to have a chat. Verysoon, you're going to be telling me about projects that you're having withLizzo.. If you don't tell me when you do that, because I know you will, it willbe very hard. So please do share. Honestly,
Tom 43:36
This is a dream. And it's the constant thingthat's going around the back of my head is when are we going to get thisproject working with someone like Lizzo or, oh my god, like Leanna have. So Idon't know, I really want something like mega female artists to come in andjust blow the orchestra to pieces. Soyeah, let's give it a year. See what happens. But thank you for inviting me.
Katya 43:55
Last time, when you said you're workingtowards your dream you get it. You said what you wanted didn't happen. So Ithink it's going to happen. Now, thank you again for sharing everything thatyou did. Do let us know where people can find you? Where can people findinformation on the project that you're working on? What should they look up?Plug away, please.
Tom 44:16
So for all Philharmonia stuff, we're on allsocial channels, and our website is just philharmonia.co.uk. So it's PHILHARMONIAdot co dot UK and spell that every day because no one ever knows how to spellit. And on socials where usually either Philharmonia Orchestra or justPhilharmonia. Loads of stuff on YouTube. Go and watch all of that. For me,personally, I've got a LinkedIn account. So if you want to add me, my name isTom Spurgeon on that, so you can find me on there.
Katya 44:47
Brilliant. All of that will be in thedescription as well with correct spellings and so on and respect the length.them. Thank you again, thank you so much for that and keep changing theatmosphere.
Tom 44:58
Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
Katya
It was so great to talk to Tom. The idea ofbeing able to carve out space for marginalised artists to work and develop, itreally excites me, it’s just wonderful!
His consistency and resilience are also soadmirable. There are clear patterns which I can track in the otherconversations I have had, to do with getting support and strategically gettingpeople on board. But the thing that I think is the magic dust in Tom’s case ishis delicate persistence! Nevertheless he persisted, but he also went and metpeople where they were on all sides of the dialogue. There’s so much to learnfrom Tom’s work, and I cannot wait to see where he takes it in the future.
Thank you for listening, keep changing theatmosphere.
