We Want to Help Make a Difference in the Fight Against Racism

Like many other companies, we put out a statement showing our support for the Black Lives Matter Movement. However, we don’t want this to be an empty gesture and are committed to making a difference through actions as well as words.

Below, we’ve outlined our plans to fight racism and help make our industry a more welcoming place for everyone.

Why haven’t we spoken out before?

Since Big Potato began, the aim has always been to make games that bring friends and family together. We’ve strived to be a welcoming, accepting and generally nice company in the board gaming world — and we thought that was enough.

However, it’s not enough to just be nice.

To make a proper difference, we must be actively anti-racist. It shouldn’t have taken the death of George Floyd, or the many other black lives lost to racism this year, to open our eyes to the inequality in our society. We’re sorry it’s taken this long and we promise to listen, learn and change.

To be clear, this post isn’t about us looking for a pat on the back. We want to detail our plans so that we’re held accountable for making real, actionable change.

What are we going to do?

This list may change and evolve over time, but at the moment, this is the first step.

We want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to support Black and Ethnic Minorities at all stages in the board game industry — whether it’s inspiring new careers, supporting existing hobbies or ensuring people can progress and thrive in the industry.

Here are the initial things that we’ll be looking into:

• The Academy: Assigning two desks in our London office to disadvantaged under-21s from inner-city London for paid (London Living Wage) creative internships.

• Conventions: Finding ways to help people from Black and Ethnic Minority backgrounds attend Game Expos around the country.

• School Programmes: Working with teachers to create game design activity packs to be used in the classroom. In particular, we’ll ensure we contact schools with a high population of Black and Ethnic Minority pupils as a priority.

• Game Donations: Giving away over 1,000 games to Youth Clubs and Groups across the UK and US every year.

• Tato Talks: Hosting a talk about the board games industry at our office every three months, where people can play games, eat pizza and network.

• Open Door Policy: Offering help and advice to people at any stage in their career.

• Monetary Donations: Introducing a fixed charity budget for the year to be spent on worthy causes.

How are we going to do this?

We have now created a team at Big Potato (one representative from each department) to develop and implement a long term plan of action. They will be meeting regularly to keep the ball rolling and to make sure that what we’re doing is really making a difference.

This is going to be an ongoing journey. We might not get everything right the first time, but we’re committed to listening, learning and improving with every step we take. We’ll be keeping you posted with all our progress, so please check back on this page for further updates.

Team Tato

If you have any issues that you’d like to raise with us, we’d love to hear from you. Please email us at hello@bigpotato.co.uk to start a conversation.