Accountability Charter

Earlier this year, we worked together to define our Group’s core and aspirational values. Our core values - Inclusive, Driven, and Dynamic - are already at the heart of everything we do. Our aspirational values represent areas we want to focus on, with the goal of embedding them into our core. They are Creative, Courageous, and Collaborative.

This year, we have chosen Collaboration as our Accountability Charter focus, aligning our aspirational value with our commitment to drive greater collective action across our yearly goals.

Collaboration is defined as the process of two or more people, groups, or organisations working together to achieve a common goal. It involves creating purposeful connections both internally and externally, drawing on a variety of skill sets, strengths, and perspectives. Collaboration emphasises teamwork, shared responsibility, and mutual support across different teams, departments, and external partners.

Our focus on collaboration will involve strengthening cross-departmental connections to encourage closer teamwork and improve project outcomes. We will continue to foster relationships with existing partners to enhance our social responsibility and impact, and we will seek new partnerships that align with our brand and values.

Our commitments fall within three key pillars of the business: Audience Development, Creative Partnerships, and Internal Practices.

1. Audience Development

We believe that a stronger collaboration with our current audience as well as continuing to expand our audience outreach will ensure an inclusive, representative and meaningful experience.

We commit to:

• Collaborating with x1 external market research company to deepen our understanding of our audience, better informing our programming, marketing strategies, and outreach initiatives.
• Fostering a more collaborative and direct conversation with our audience to ensure their voices shape our work.
• Hosting 2 focus groups to gather qualitative insights on their needs, preferences, and barriers to engagement.
• Distributing weekly post-show surveys (300+) to collect feedback on programming, accessibility, and overall satisfaction.
• Creating x1 interactive social media campaign that invites audience participation and feedback.
• Continuing our partnership with Scope to offer discounted accessible tickets to a selection of shows at the Barbican Centre.

2. Creative Partnerships

We actively seek out collaborations with creative partners who align with our commitments. This includes venues, publishers, community groups, charities, and outreach organisations. We particularly want to engage with those that help to amplify the voices, stories, and experiences of all marginalised groups and will proactively and sensitively seek out more diverse stories for our programme.

We commit to:

• Building on our ongoing partnership with War Child, producing x2 co-pro events with a charity or creative partner as part of a limited series.
• Producing x1 pop-up event in collaboration with Henley Literary Festival outside of the standard festival dates. For context, Fane Group became the new headline sponsor for Henley Literary Festival for the next two years, as part of our wider support of the arts. Hear more about our partnership here.

• Working with the Booksellers Association to create a best practice document that ensures we work collaboratively and equitably with booksellers within the UK.

• Working with 20+ regional independent photographers and videographers throughout 2025 for our events.

3. Internal Practices

We are dedicated to developing work practices and policies that promote an inclusive and accessible workforce where individuals of all abilities can thrive. We believe in equal opportunities in employment and enabling access and insight into the creative industry.

We commit to:

• Strengthening cross-group collaboration to encourage closer teamwork, improve project outcomes and spark new ideas by:
  • Hosting x1 team session to strengthen collective understandings of everyone’s roles. The idea is a concept called Curious Coffees where people get matched with other people in the business to find out more about what they do.
  • Hosting x1 Skill Swap sessions to allow employees from different departments and/or businesses to teach others skills relevant to their roles.
  • Continuing to support our Mentorship programme – which pairs an employee who has recently passed probation with a senior team member - with a dedicated budget to better support monthly catch-ups.

• Alongside our quarterly Wellbeing Seminars, delivering x1 external training session to all managers and senior team on the topic of “Accelerating Team Innovation & Collaboration”.

• Continuing to build on our partnership with The Shannon Trust with areas of collaboration that could include:
  • Creating new writing for their Write Now learning manuals to share with their learners, providing them with different types of reading material.
  • Internal fundraising.
  • Continuing to raise awareness and support the charity through our customer donations at point of purchase on all Fane events.

• As a long-term project, we would like to put together a video of ‘Behind the Scenes’ at Fane, showcasing our team in action, at work, at events across the country and beyond, working on projects together and interacting at company days. This would truly contribute to showcasing our collaboration in action and would provide prospective candidates with an inside look at Fane, further demonstrating our core values: Inclusive, Dynamic and Driven. The timeline for this is more 12-24 months. As a first step, we will begin the conversation in our various Employee Working Groups.

CORE COMMITMENTS

In addition to our focused commitments, we commit to continuously review and enhance our core commitments in key areas such as Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Sustainability and Employee Wellbeing.

By the end of 2025, we commit to:

• Maintaining the amount of ethnically diverse talent within our events programme – 25% for live events and 40% for online events.

• Continuing our partnership with War Child through:
  • Optional customer donations at point of purchase across all Fane Group live and online events.
  • x1 internal Lunch & Learn session to raise awareness about the work War Child does and how everyone can get involved.
  • Having Fane representation at War Child’s events.
  • x2 features in the Fane UK newsletter.

• Building on our work with environmental consultancy team, Eight Versa, we will be continuing to collect our ESG data for fiscal year 2025, to be released in Q1 2026, as part of DEAG’s annual ESG report now required by law in Germany. This work will continue to support our commitment to considering our environmental impact at every level in our decision making, aiming to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.

• Supporting employee wellbeing and mental health by continuously reviewing our Employee Benefits Booklet including:
  • Providing all employees with access to Clear Talents, an inclusion tool aimed at improving workplace understanding. Employees can voluntarily complete online Inclusion, Office Workstation, Home Workstation and Bullying & Harassment Passports to inform HR and managers about conditions that may impact their work, from disabilities to health conditions, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and more. The platform covers all nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act, allowing employees to update their details as circumstances change. Employees control who can access this data, and reasonable adjustments can be requested based on disclosed information, providing a safe space and an additional forum for employees to feel supported in the workplace.

• Hosting optional quarterly yoga sessions at our London office.

• Continuing to fully support our employee resource groups, recognising that their efforts can have a direct and positive impact on the wider Group - both externally, through our programming and partnerships, and internally, through inclusion and culture initiatives. While we don’t enforce senior representation to keep the space inclusive and accessible, we want the senior team to have visibility on the Working Groups’ work so that they can take it into account in their decision-making, specifically in programming. Moving forward, working groups will submit a progress update to the full team after 6 months; and the group CEO will attend one meeting each quarter.

• Building on the success of the first year of our quarterly Hall of Fane recognition scheme where employees have the chance to give a colleague the recognition they deserve. All nominations are shared with the wider group and the winner receives a £100 voucher. To make the scheme more inclusive, we’re introducing a new system where Q2 and Q4 nominations will focus on a specific theme. Q1 and Q3 nominations will follow the usual process. Themes will be:
  • “Quietly Making a Big Difference, highlighting someone whose impact may not be loud or obvious, but is significant and meaningful, nonetheless. Their efforts might not always be in the spotlight, which is why you should be the one to celebrate their fantastic contributions.”
  • “Beyond the Team, Beyond the Company, acknowledging someone who doesn't work as part of your company or team, but whose fantastic work is felt across the business.”

• Hosting team initiatives in line with our awareness calendar such as, but not limited to:
  • A Tea & Talk session for Time to Talk Day.
  • A Gratitude Wall, Resource Corner and Self-Care DIY kits for Mental Health Awareness Week.
  • A team fast for Ramadan.

• Hosting quarterly team building initiatives such as Pizza & Games Night and Bowling as well as bi-annual Culture Picnics where everyone is encouraged to bring a dish that is culturally significant to them.

• Hosting x4 Employee Wellbeing Seminars.