Thursday, April 18, 2019
LDI Announces Pat MacKay Scholarships For Diversity In Design
www.livedesignonline.com: To encourage diversity in the live event design community, LDI, in partnership with TSDCA and USITT, announces three $5,000 Pat MacKay Scholarships for undergraduate students. This scholarship is to support the underrepresented and unique voices in the field of entertainment. These scholarships are funded by LDI/Live Design International.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I'm really glad that in todays day and age there is a particular emphasis that is being paid to to creating a more diverse playing field for designers, especially lighting designers. This past summer, I remember walking into production meetings for the summer stock theater I was working for in Santa Cruz and all I could think to myself was, "wow I am really the only person of color in the room, and I'm only an intern". I think that it can be very discouraging for budding theatre professionals who are not actors to feel like they are sort of required to speak for their entire culture without any backup. This type of scholarship encourages more diverse designers to take the big leap of faith and enter into the design world. The more diverse voices in a room can greatly change the overall culture and feel of design rooms, especially with the amount of theater that is being produced that has to do with diversity and people of color.
This is really exciting! Last week I commented on an article where an actual company attempted something similar by paying performers of color more than white performers and how, while understandable, it does not necessarily hold up in a court. This kind of thing is much more doable, legal, and less likely to anger people. I genuinely wonder if there is a way of doing this in the workplace that would be considered legal. I think it is a really good thing to create a more diverse team within a company and I am glad people are trying to do that. I feel like grants and scholarships are really the way to go for this and will hopefully level out the playing field and allow designers who are marginalized to have the funds to pursue their passions. Diverse creative teams are especially important as we attempt to tell more diverse stories. It is not just about correctly representing onstage identities when every person making creative decisions is white.
Post a Comment