The new chair of Arts Council England, Dawn Airey, has pledged to increase investment in diverse-led cultural organisations in her first public address since taking up the role in August, succeeding Nicholas Serota. Speaking at a national gathering in Leicester marking 50 years since the publication of The Arts Britain Ignores, the landmark 1976 report by the late journalist, activist and cultural historian Naseem Khan on the exclusion of Black artists and culturally diverse communities from Britain's cultural establishment, Airey said inequalities in funding and representation remain entrenched across the sector. She told the audience that current levels of investment in diverse-led organisations cannot and must not be a high-water mark, promising that the Arts Council would build on and grow its existing commitments rather than merely protecting or sustaining them. Only about 12 percent of the organisations the Arts Council currently funds are led by people from Black, Asian and other ethnically minoritised backgrounds, she said, well short of the roughly 19 percent of England's population that identifies as belonging to an ethnic minority. Airey warned that racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism remain part of daily life for too many people in the sector, sometimes crude and obvious, sometimes subtle and deniable, and said those who do not experience them have a responsibility to stand with those who do, backing that with action rather than words. She added that the diversity of the Arts Council's own workforce, governing council and decision-making must reflect the country it serves. She chose to give the speech at the Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage in Leicester, the room where Khan's report was launched in 1976, as the clearest possible signal of what she believes the job is for, and said she would return to report honestly on what has moved and what has not. The speech comes as applications for the Arts Council's new National Portfolio, running from 2028 to 2033, open on 20 October.