Diversity in Brewing is a new initiative aimed at diversifying the B.C. craft brewing landscape, awarding queer and BIPOC students a scholarship to aid their studies, and offering diversity and inclucity resources to breweries province-wide.

Heather Keegan, coordinator of the Diversity in Brewing initiative, talks about the barriers to accessibility that the founders of the initiative identified prior to launching this award and the vision that the initiative has for the future of B.C. breweries.

Diversity in Brewing scholarship

Keegan, who managed a tasting room for 7 years prior to joining this initiative, noticed a stark contrast between the people running and working in breweries and the customers coming in to them. “It’s not like the people interested in beer and the guests in the tasting room aren’t diverse, so why is it that on the other side of the counter, the industry is so heavily cis, white, and male? There’s not only one type of person that likes beer,” she says.

Some 39 breweries all over B.C., including the Okanagan, Vancouver Island, and the Lower Mainland contributed to the award for the 2020–21 school year. The scholarship aims to raise a minimum of $5000 per year to award to second year Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) students working towards the Brewery and Brewing Operations diploma program. This year, they surpassed their goal and were able to award three different KPU students the scholarship to fund their studies.

The award is completely donation-based and was designed this way in order to ensure its longevity and deeply root the scholarship in the B.C. brewing community. On their website, the founders explain this, saying, “we believe it’s important for this scholarship not to come from or be centred on one specific business or brand but to be a collective, sustainable, and long-lasting initiative.”

Inclusivity resources for all breweries

The Diversity in Brewing initiative, however, recognizes that it is not enough to bring queer and BIPOC people into these heavily straight, white, and male spaces, nor is it often safe to do so at all. Commonly, the exclusive and harmful effects of beer culture are perpetuated within breweries themselves, so the real work is uprooting “beer culture” as it currently exists and transforming its nature of exclusion and overwhelming masculinity to one where people of diverse backgrounds can be included and accepted, they say.

Heather Keegan, coordinator of the Diversity in Brewing initiative. | Photo courtesy of Diversity in Brewing

In August 2020, the initiative launched a blog as a free resource aimed at educating local craft brewery owners and managers about how to make their spaces safer for and more accessible to all people. The blog also includes a series titled “6 Questions With…” where a different person working in the B.C. craft brewing industry is featured every week. It is a place where people can speak about their own experiences, and where brewery students can be represented in the industry.

“We’re hoping that the resources provided in the blog will help any breweries who are trying to be better and do more. Once people can gather safely again, we’re hoping to create panels and differently-accessible industry events,” Keegan says.

The goal of these events will be to “discuss current industry issues and tackle things collectively, to ensure that moving forward the industry can be as inclusive as possible,” she adds.

Regarding the future of the award, Keegan says they hope to take it nationwide and open it up to all students in different brewing programs across the country in the next few years.

On the future of the craft brewing industry in B.C., Keegan and the team at Diversity in Brewing are working to make all breweries, not just the ones specifically aimed at underrepresented groups, safer spaces for queer and BIPOC people.

“Tap rooms are usually the gateway into the industry for a lot of people. So we have to make sure that those places are really reflective of the community around us and are as respectful, welcoming, and accessible as possible,” she says, emphasizing this point..

Students interested in applying for the scholarship can do so by writing a letter of intent explaining their industry goals, which are then reviewed by a committee assembled through KPU, chaired by LGBTQ and BIPOC folks.

For more information on the initiative and award, visit www.diversityinbrewing.com.