Spring news from the Equality and Diversity Committee: discussions on e.g. the Student Union’s statement and principles of safer space
Our university has an equality and diversity committee, which has the duty to promote equality within our community. The group convenes about four times per year to discuss topical equality and diversity issues within our community. The group is led by HR and Service Director Riikka Mäki-Ontto. Teachers, students and service personnel are all represented in the group. See a list of the group’s members.
Anyone in the community can contact a member of the committee if they have an equality- or diversity-related topic that they would like to bring forward for the group to discuss. The committee has compiled an equality plan for the university, and the current version of the document will be valid until 2024. Read more about the Equality and Diversity Plan on our website.
Training sessions and a communications campaign coming up in the autumn
During the spring term, the committee has convened twice to discuss topical equality and diversity issues.
In the February meeting, the committee discussed the measures that the university took in 2022 to promote equality and diversity. In 2022, the committee carried out an anti-racism campaign on the university’s internal platforms, arranged diversity-related training seminars, introduced the Code of Conduct to teachers and organised a Compliment a Colleague (Kehu kaveria) campaign. During the meeting, the group also went through the wellbeing questionnaire conducted by Mehiläinen and reviewed whether gender equality in job pay is achieved at our university. The conclusion was that there are no significant differences in the salaries of women and men.
In the February meeting, the group also discussed plans for the current year. The university will offer training opportunities to learn more about accessibility and non-binary identities, for example. You can go to Artsi to read more about staff training.
A forum on accessible pedagogy and increasing the use of multiple languages at Uniarts Helsinki is also being planned. The Compliment a Colleague campaigns are also an example of how the committee engages in the promotion of equality and a sense of community. There will also be measures aimed at teaching and research staff, in particular, including training seminars focusing on mental health challenges and challenging interaction situations, as well as on teaching planning and implementation from the perspective of accessibility. During the autumn term, a course on diversity will be offered as part of the studies in university pedagogy.
During the spring, the committee has discussed students’ feedback on giving anonymous feedback as well as the Student Union’s statement titled “The University of the Arts Helsinki must invest more in the well-being of students”. Based on the feedback, the university has tried to make methods of giving feedback as a student clearer on the Students’ Uniarts website. The website also now has clearer guidelines for dealing with conflicts involving students. In the autumn, the university and the Student Union will organise a joint communications campaign with the aim of increasing people’s awareness of what to do if they face inappropriate behaviour within the university community. The aim of the campaign is also to highlight each person’s responsibility in interaction situations and in bringing up difficult topics.
The committee has also discussed the principles of safer space. The need to have guidelines for safer space has been evident in artistic activities, especially from the perspective of the public attending the events. The group agreed that the HR team will help in preparing the guidelines, and the HR team will also assist other service areas if the need for guidance occurs.
Further information
If you need more information about the committee’s activities, go to an Artsi page titled equality and diversity or contact the chair of the committee Riikka Mäki-Ontto or Equality and Diversity Coordinator Mia Seppälä.