What do we mean by Advocacy?
In a modern context and in different countries the word advocacy has multiple definitions and understandings. Some charities in the UK and US have a quite different understanding of advocacy from ours and carry out their work in different ways. In England, UK, advocacy is a vocational or professional skill different from the work of an attorney, solicitor or barrister, who may be called upon to support or amplify the advocate’s work.
Here at Multitude of Voyces, before we can be effective advocates we have to research our specialist area (link to research section) to find out what support is needed, and why.
In the context of Multitude of Voyces our advocacy can mean:
- speaking up for a whole community which might have faced, or might still face, discrimination or prejudice in the Arts, especially in classical-music
- drawing in qualified experts with appropriate qualifications and lived experience, to ensure that our message is accurate
- taking care to get to know our Stakeholders well so that we can work with them to amplify their voices
- providing a platform for individuals in the Arts to represent themselves through their own words when they wish to
- following the wishes expressed in a composer’s or writer’s Will in relation to their creative work
- carefully constructing contextualised and balanced biographies of people from the past, without hyperbole or caricature
- preparing our publications with great care and professionalism
- giving composers or writers the opportunity to explore an area of interest to them, by commissioning and publishing a new work
- accessing information and carrying out background research to allow composers and writers to focus on their creative work
- generating meaningful royalties payments for our composers, writers and other copyright-holders, to support their further work
- knowing how to differentiate between the public interest and our Stakeholders’ personal privacy
As advocates we try not to:
- speak on behalf of or represent a community or group whose lived experience is so different from our own that we cannot fully understand it
- speak for others when they prefer to speak for themselves
- use the vocabulary of gender, race or other characteristics to label negatively, rather than simply to identify, different communities or groups
- make value judgements about others or their work based on gender, race or other characteristics or commonalities
- point the spotlight at the advocate