The Recording Academy has teamed up with Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization, to encourage social change within the music industry. The academy has made $1-million-dollar donation to the non-profit.
“We are honored to partner with Color of Change as we work together to set new standards to elevate Black music creators and build a more diverse and equitable industry,” said Valeisha Butterfield Jones, the academy’s first chief diversity & inclusion officer.
Both organizations are coming together to recognize major opportunities to drive change in the music industry. They will also focus on building power for Black music creators and professionals. You can also look forward to the creation of a Black music advisory group, an industry-wide diversity and inclusion summit, a Recording Academy membership campaign, and partnership in advocacy and legislative efforts.
“[We want] to set a baseline across the music industry that starts at the Recording Academy on our diversity and inclusion numbers. From there it will be launching an inclusion rider with Colors of Change that the Recording Academy will take on to set clear goals and metrics around hiring, representation, and amplifying the voices of creators…We will be making an appeal to the music industry to consider also hiring and appointing chief diversity and inclusion officers within their organizations as well as considering this inclusion rider as a necessary tool to track, measure, and drive change,” Butterfield Jones explained.
Color of Change has seen significant growth in the past two months.
“About a month and a half ago, we had 1.7 million people who had taken action with us in the last few months,” Organization’s president Rashad Robinson says. “We’ve since grown to over 7 million people who have taken action with us.”
“We’ve worked with a number of artists over the years, especially artists who have spoken out on criminal justice [reform]. We have done partnerships with folks like John Legend and Common and others to do work to build awareness and do education work,” Robinson added. “This partnership [with the Recording Academy] is sort of an extension of that. It is an extension to do the work we’re been doing to push industries [on the subject of] inclusion; to shift the rules; to ensure more voices are heard.”
Congratulations on the partnership!