Equality and Diversity

Young boy sitting next to chalk rainbow on the pavement

Our vision is that our youngest children, from birth to 5 years, fulfil their right to access arts and creative experiences that give inspiration, joy and wonder to early childhood in Scotland. 

Our mission is to inspire babies, toddlers and young children by including them in high quality live performances and creative experiences that fulfil their right to access a rich arts and cultural life in Scotland regardless of where they live or their background. 

Starcatchers offers innovative, beautiful, collaborative arts and creative experiences that babies, toddlers and young children aged birth-5 can share with their parents and carers. Engaging with and participating in these activities brings joy and wonder, fostering the understanding that very young children are creative agents with their own capabilities and voices.  Placing the child’s voice at the heart of everything we do also means looking after things that are central to children’s wellbeing. This means making strong choices to actively support diversity and inclusion so that all babies can grow up in a more equal and just society. It also means a commitment to climate action, carbon reduction and new models of sustainable working. 

Starcatchers was founded to provide our youngest children with the opportunity to experience theatre and the arts. Integral to that was the belief that all children, regardless of their age and stage of development, have a right to access arts and cultural life as outlined in Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). 

This belief is unwavering. As Scotland incorporates the UNCRC into domestic law, our resolve to ensure that all our youngest children have access to age-appropriate, quality arts and cultural experiences is reinforced. 

We believe that Scotland should be the best place in the world to grow up and that Starcatchers, as Scotland’s Arts and Early Years Organisation, has an integral role to play in achieving this goal. 

Underpinning all our work sit two actions for change – Diversity and Environment.  As we strive to address some of the most significant challenges of our time, we aim to achieve positive action through our activities and our model of working. 

There is currently an inequity of access to the arts. We must actively work together with those facing marginalisation and exclusion to find out what is needed and wanted, and how we positively effect change. We will strive to amplify the voices of the under-represented, this means actively diversifying the artists we work with, the work we make, the audiences we engage with, and the staff and board who support the organisation.