At the Edinburgh TV Festival last week, the High-end TV Skills Fund hosted a panel asking if a person’s background was a factor in career progression and whether skills and training could play a role in improving equity.
Chaired by comedian, actor and writer Lucy Beaumont, the panelists were Kaye Elliott, Director of High-end TV (HETV), ScreenSkills, Barrington Paul Robinson, Creative Producer, HETV Skills Fund alumni Michaela McCaffrey, Assistant Accountant and HETV Skills Fund Leader of Tomorrow, Josie Dobrin OBE, Co-Founder and Executive Chair, Creative Access and Marcia Williams, Equity & Inclusion Director, Channel 4.
To start, the audience was asked if their background had been a barrier to progressing their career. 74% of those who responded answered “Yes” to the question, and Josie Dobrin also shared some statistics from Creative Access’ The class ceiling in the creative industries. The research revealed that 73% of working class people said that working class representation was lacking at senior levels; and that working class people currently in senior roles earned 16% less than colleagues from higher social classes.
The panellists discussed the challenge of defining ‘class’ and the various considerations including affordability, regionality and level of educational attainment.
In terms of training, Kaye Elliott outlined what the HETV Skills Fund offered. This includes the change-making Leaders of Tomorrow Programme as well as programmes specifically for writers and producers. Additionally, she reminded the audience that ScreenSkills bursaries were available to cover a range of costs from childcare to driving lessons, as long as they enabled the recipient to work or progress their career.
Marcia Williams underlined the importance of signposting training and available support clearly to help break down barriers to access and progression, adding that Channel 4’s 4Skills is doubling its funding to £10 million.
The audience also heard about the experiences of Michaela and Barrington. Michaela said that in her experience, people still made initial judgements based on both a person’s accent and name and Barrington reflected that people across the industry needed to act like “football scouts” - seeking out talent more proactively..
Michaela’s comments are backed up by further research from Creative Access conducted in 2023 that showed that 77% of people working in the creative industries felt they had to change their accents in the workplace and 89% of the Creative Access community felt prematurely and sub-consciously judged by others based simply on their accent and manner of speech.
“Someone’s background shouldn’t stop a person having a career in the screen industries, but it is clear that first we need to define what we mean by class and identify the barriers,” commented Kaye Elliott. “Then, working with colleagues across the industry, not only can we design tangible solutions but also ensure that we have a way of monitoring progress and impact.”