diversity

At a time when ­producers and broadcasters are working hard to ensure diversity in their workforce as well as on screen, the team at Signpost Productions in the North East of England can claim to be ahead of the curve. Eleven of the company’s 23 full-time staff are deaf or have another disability – physical, chronic or hidden. Between them, they produce more than 1,000 hours of signed British Sign Language (BSL) translations a year for programming on three major broadcasters, including ITV.

Troy Deeney – Where’s My History? will follow Deeney during his high-profile campaign to make it mandatory to teach the history of black, Asian and minority ethnic experiences in the school curriculum.

A YouGov survey of 1000 primary and secondary school teachers discovered that only 12% of teachers feel confident and empowered to teach ‘optional’ black related topics. 

Deeney’s frustration with the lack of diversity in what students are taught in schools led to him writing an open letter to Rt Hon Nadhim Zahawi, Secretary of State for Education.

All eyes will be on ­Melanie Dawes when she speaks at the RTS Cambridge Convention in mid-September. The CEO of Ofcom for the past tumultuous 18 months was pre­ceded by the charismatic Sharon White – a star attraction at the conference whenever she spoke.

“Melanie Dawes is the most experienced and impressive Chief Executive that Ofcom has had,” opines an industry insider. And this will be the first opportunity most of her audience has had to hear her in person, thanks to the pandemic.

Anthology series 

The four-part anthology series will see UKTV team up with TriForce Creative Network, an organisation that works to remove obstacles stopping diverse and emerging talent from progressing in the industry. 

The multi-step process will use TriForce’s WriterSlam platform, which is known for discovering writers from all backgrounds, and ask for writing scripts across a range of topics and genres. 

Oh, noooo. The D word. Surely not Donald? No, not that D word – the other one. The one that makes your heart sink a little, too. The one that reminds you of years of struggle. The one that tells of endless meetings with fellow campaigners in drab rooms, banging heads against brick walls.

Fast-tracking new and diverse talent into a variety of roles, the scheme will offer year-long contracts to successful candidates as well as mentoring and training.

If you thought that defining diversity was easy, think again. As the chair of a stimulating and thought-provoking RTS event, Aaqil Ahmed, formerly the head of religion and ethics at the BBC, concluded: “Diversity in itself is diverse. For me, that understanding of it isn’t there for a lot of people.… It’s not a numbers game… diversity is very complicated.”

Throughout the “Defining diversity? That’s easy” session, attempts to provide a definition that all the panel could agree on proved elusive.

“Diversity is all of us,” said Creative Strategy consultant Ally Castle, a former programme maker and audience insights expert for the BBC.  

“If you look at the nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act (age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership and pregnancy and maternity) we all have those characteristics.  

“It’s just that some of us are under-represented in the TV industry, on screen and perhaps in wider society.  

“The [TV] industry genuinely is changing for the better, but we are where we are because lots of people have talked about stuff and not enough people have done anything,” added the CEO of Plimsoll Productions.

“We’re trying to appeal to broad audiences. How on earth can we do that if it’s all being seen through the prism of a bunch of middle-class white people? They should be part of the group, not the whole bloody group.”

Mansfield was part of a panel assembled for an RTS West of England webinar in late June discussing the health of the region’s TV production.

It is the best of times: the television business is booming. It is the worst of times: there is a skill shortage, so wage costs are soaring. Yet shouldn’t that make it the best of times again? Won’t television be forced to find and train a new generation of programme-makers who won’t all be white and middle class? This, I tell Seetha Kumar, the ambitious chief executive of ScreenSkills, is a battle she can win.