Equity, diversity and inclusion have been a core thread of our work and indeed, Science Ceilidh was established especially to work with communities who may be considered “easy to ignore “ and traditionally marginalised. We believe that not working to prioritise these groups only preserves and widens the gaps.

We try to embed this through all our work - from the diverse role models we highlight in our careers talks, the researchers we work with, our language during events, to our choice of projects and partners which have included Multicultural Family Base, Beeslack Disabled Club, Care for Carers, and the New Scots Steering Group in Edinburgh.

However, to ally is a verb and a continual process and we acknowledge that we can and should be doing more to actively dismantle racism along with poverty, sexism and ableism in our work. We currently have limited capacities, being largely affected by COVID crisis and no core-funding, but our commitments still include:

• Partnering with Anti-Racist and other anti-discrimination and equality organisations to develop specific shared programmes and resources which including acknowledging and educating on the structural racism in science, health and culture.

• Signpost to Anti-Racist and anti-discrimination resources, and social justice actions including petitions.

• Openly recognising that tackling structural discrimination is a key part of creativity, culture, STEM and health and wellbeing.

• Incorporating Anti-Racism action and conversations in all our communities of practice.

• Critically engaging with which platforms we are involved in including refusing to take part in un-diverse conferences.

• If we restart growing the organisation, actively recruit a diverse pool of freelancers.