#SRtRCSpotlight: Empowering Anti-Racist Leadership – SRtRC & DARPL’s Extended Leadership Series
In an era when racism continues to challenge institutions, communities, and individuals, leadership must evolve. It is not enough to simply espouse values of equity and inclusion. Leaders must develop deeper racial literacy, critically shape policy, and embed anti-racist cultures across their organisations.
We proud to collaborate with DARPL (Diversity and Anti-Racist Professional Learning) on their Extended / Enhanced Leadership Series, a transformative professional learning programme for senior leaders, governors, and change-makers across education, childcare, play work, and education related settings.
Show Racism the Red Card (SRtRC) has, for decades, used high-profile role models and educational resources to challenge racism in schools and communities across the UK. We are grateful to be a core and founding partner of DARPL, leading to a partnership that has built a strong reputation for providing rigorous anti-racist professional learning guiding systemic change by focusing on power, whiteness, and organisational culture.
The partnership understands that to shift the status quo, leadership capacity must be deepened, not surface-level.
Within DARPL’s Extended / Enhanced Leadership Series, SRtRC contributes to modules explicitly designed to push leaders beyond inclusive frameworks into anti-racist leadership practice. The programme provides spaces for our educators to lead sessions to help cohort members explore blind spots, institutional power structures, and the tensions that arise in leading change. Our role is not as a guest speaker with a one-off presentation, but as a collaborative partner shaping the learning journey facilitating workshops, supporting cohort-led sessions, and engaging in critical reflections.
This week, we welcomed the fifth cohort of over 50 leaders onto the Extended Leadership Series along with Apex Educate kicking off the first of five sessions (three in person, two online) across several months, the ELS demands a high level of commitment from participants with its aims including:
- Cultivating anti-racist leadership and professional practice as an ongoing continuum.
- Enabling leaders to co-construct tools and frameworks to critically appraise their own organisational culture.
- Facilitating peer-to-peer dialogue in safe and brave spaces, to share reflections, challenges, and strategies.
- Aligning leaders’ strategic planning to national and local anti-racism policy (e.g. the Welsh Government’s Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan, and the recommendations of Professor Charlotte Williams)
- Fostering action research, independent reflection, and embedding anti-racist interventions within participants’ professional contexts.
Through our joint work, we are helping to break cycles where commitments to diversity remain superficial. The Extended Leadership Series is enabling leaders to:
- Recognise how leadership must engage with racial power, not just represent diversity.
- Translate learning into sustainable culture change (not one-off initiatives);
- Build networks of leaders who can support one another through challenge and accountability.
- Encourage courageous leadership that can transform policy, curriculum, staffing, and organisational norms.
Show Racism the Red Card’s partnership with DARPL in the Extended / Enhanced Leadership Series exemplifies how education and anti-racism organisations can coalesce to drive deep systemic change. This is more than a training programme – it is a leadership incubator for those committed to turning anti-racist values into sustainable structures, policies and cultures. As the impact continues to unfold, we are charting a path for leadership that is equipped not just to respond to racism, but to transform the institutions and norms that sustain it.
If you are a leader working in education, childcare, playwork, or early years and are interested in registering for Cohort 6 in the spring term of 2026, you may reserve your place using the link below.
Participation is free of charge for leaders in Wales working in School, Local Authority, ITE, CPEY and related umbrella contexts, funded by Welsh Government and endorsed by NAEL; the investment of leadership time and sustained commitment are essential and rooted in ArWAP expectations. Our alumni and current cohorts include leaders from local authorities, headteachers and school leadership teams, assessment and awarding bodies, civil service, inspectorates, and more: https://darpl.org/community-of-practice/enhanced-leadership-series/
If you work outside of Wales or in Further or Higher Education, you are also welcome to attend ELS – you can discuss individual costs, please email DARPL@cardiffmet.ac.uk
SRtRC Campaign Manager for Wales & the West, Dean Pymble shared:
“The partnership between Show Racism the Red Card and DARPL on the Extended Leadership Series is incredibly powerful. By combining SRtRC’s decades of experience in anti-racism education with DARPL’s expertise in professional learning, we are creating a programme that doesn’t just raise awareness it builds the confidence, capacity, and courage leaders need to drive lasting change in their organisations and communities.”
Fardous Chowdury, ELS Co-ordinator added:
“The Enhanced Leadership Series, DARPL’s flagship programme, is shaping leaders across South and North Wales — developing anti-racist leadership, deepening self-reflection, building brave spaces, and dismantling barriers to change.”
Chantelle Haughton, DARPL Founder-Director:
“The DARPL Enhanced Leadership Series (ELS) brings together a wide range of expertise and lived experiences from within our Community of Practice from grassroots organisations, professors and ELS alumni. Feedback shows us that leaders learning together build confidence, competence and legacythrough their development in anti-racist leadership, policy and practice impacting their whole learning organisations.”
If you are interested in finding out more on this partnership or how our team in Wales can support your anti-racism journey, please click the button below to complete the form: