Now in its third successful year, an Arts Council programme is launching a drive for high flyers from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds to join the boards of arts organisations.

It is being led by the Mayor of London and the Arts Council of England, in partnership with Arts & Business, Museum, Libraries and Archives London and Sporting Equals. It was developed to address the lack of diversity at a leadership level across the cultural sector and has so far achieved much success - the second phase, which ran from 2006 to 2007, has already seen 22 out of 37 participants become broad members or trustees.

The initiative equips potential trustees with the skills they need to operate at board level and matches them with cultural organisations that are keen to diversify their boards.

Mayor Ken Livingstone said: “London’s arts scene is leading the way internationally with more theatres, galleries, museums, music venues, concert halls and cinemas than other global cities such as New York, Paris and Shanghai. Key to this success is the capital’s diversity - there are over 300 languages spoken here everyday and this is a key contributor to our creative success.”

“However, there is a particular issue in that at a leadership level there is a lack of diversity on many of the boards of our cultural institutions. The GAIN programme has been very successful in reducing this imbalance by bringing together talented high flyers from the ethnic minority backgrounds with those in charge of our cultural institutions. It has grown from strength to strength over the last two years and so I am delighted to announce the next phase of the programme, which has been expanded to cover arts, sport and now museums.”

Potential candidates should visit http://gain.itc-arts.org for information; or contact Kemi Bamidele by email: k.bamidele@itc-arts.org.