The Guardian
Fraser Ayres
- We must improve inclusivity and access. Audiences are not all white, straight men in their 50s like the industry’s gatekeepers
The pinnacle of the awards season, the Oscars, takes place on Sunday, but the cloud that looms over the Academy Awards cannot be escaped. Diversity, inclusivity, under-represented groups – whatever you choose to call it, it has drawn attention to this year’s awards for the wrong reasons.
The rising rhetoric surrounding diversity hasn’t abated and with the high profile of the Oscars, there has been a kickback that has ignited voices on this side of the pond, with the Bafta voters indulging in some serious self-congratulation due to nominations not being quite #sowhite.
It would be interesting to know how many people from “diverse backgrounds” were invited to the awards. Can we honestly say the UK is in a better state of affairs? If it were, there wouldn’t have been an exodus of diverse British talent to the States, with the likes of Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejiofor and David Oyelowo primarily working elsewhere instead of being seen on our own screens.
Going to the States didn’t make these people talented. They were talented way before they got on the plane, but our decision-makers fail to recognise them and instead wait until somebody becomes a superstar before giving them a half-decent job in the UK.
It’s clear that the perception of creatives is different from that of creators and decision-makers. Many talk about the financial imperative of engaging with diverse audiences, but it goes far beyond that and we need to catch up quickly if we want to keep our jobs and our industry alive.
Shockingly, the most under-represented group is still women – last autumn a survey revealed just 13% of directors featured at Venice were women, while the Toronto total was 26%. But if you add up all of the under-represented groups then that isn’t a diverse group. They aren’t the “other”; they are the majority. When we talk about reaching diverse audiences or creating more diverse content, we actually now mean pretty much everybody who isn’t a white, straight male in his 50s. This is the fundamental problem in our industry that we share with our US counterparts; our decision-makers, funding sources, awards, script readers and executives are now the minority.
This isn’t really about diversity. This is, and always has been, an issue of inclusion and access – of class and socio-economics. If talented creatives from all walks of life don’t have the resources to follow a very expensive and particular path, then the odds of progressing are slim. This applies to actors, writers, producers, camera operators, potential executives, and it traverses all backgrounds. This is why everything we do is based around creating tangible outcomes and putting that creative talent directly in decision-makers’ black books. Now back to the imperative. If people don’t have access then they will find their own. With or without us. Our dissatisfied audiences simply find their content elsewhere. Our creatives become pioneers and go yonder to find riches. Dreams can’t be quashed, drives can’t be stopped.
As is happening with actors, we’re now beginning to see it with the new production companies. Organisations such as We Do It Together, Gamechanger Films and our own TriForce Productions, have sprung up over the past couple of years to tackle the problems directly.
This new wave of content creators have been formed by people who have come to our industry through alternative routes, and have been seeing slow progress in the UK and a major divide between the receptivity and the reality in our industry, leading to some production companies now signing contracts with American distribution networks, and bypassing our UK-based broadcasters.
Not only are we failing to engage with wider audiences (the new majority of “everybody else”) we’re failing the creatives who could help us make that content. That’s incredibly dangerous for the longevity of our industry as we know it. We’ve lost so many actors, can we really afford to let all of our writers, directors and producers leave as well?
