Broadcasting gives women visibility but not equality

A UK broadcaster discusses the challenges of the profession with Doris Ruth Eikho

What Jeremy Corbyn should have said about the after-work pint

Workplace cultures in which decision-making depends on out-of-hours networking are bad for workforce diversity, argues Doris Ruth Eikho

Explicit and implicit diversity policy in the UK film and television industries

This article adapts Jeremy Ahearne's (2009) conception of explicit and implicit cultural policy for a novel analysis of contemporary diversity policy in the British film and television industries. It demonstrates how distinguishing explicit and implicit diversity policy enables a better understanding of the policies, practices and strategic actions that impact workforce diversity outcomes. We provide an in-depth analysis of the different types of intervention that have been used to increase workforce diversity in the film and television industries in the UK since 2012. We then examine the arguments used to justify increased workforce diversity, focussing on the 'business case for diversity' and the logics which underpin it. Drawing on our own research as well as industry reports and secondary literature, we examine the explicit and implicit workings of these policies and how they affect workforce diversity outcomes. We argue that the implicit/explicit dichotomy nuances and improves our understanding of the competing and contradictory forces that shape strategic courses of action towards workforce diversity in the film and television industries, and a more nuanced conceptualisation of diversity policies and their outcomes

Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland: Final Report

Final Report of the Consortium for Research in Arts, Technology in Scotland (CReATeS), relating to the Digital R&D Fund for Arts in Scotland, funded by Nesta/AHRC/Creative Scotland

The promised land? Why social inequalities are systemic in the creative industries

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop a more comprehensive understanding of why social inequalities and discrimination remain in the creative industries. Design/methodology/approach - The paper synthesizes existing academic and industry research and data, with a particular focus on the creative media industries. Findings - The paper reveals that existing understanding of the lack of diversity in the creative industries' workforce is conceptually limited. Better understanding is enabled through an approach centred on the creative industries' model of production. This approach explains why disadvantage and discrimination are systemic, not transitory. Practical implications - The findings suggest that current policy assumptions about the creative industries are misguided and need to be reconsidered. The findings also indicate how future research of the creative industries ought to be framed. Originality/value - The paper provides a novel synthesis of existing research and data to explain how the creative industries' model of production translates into particular features of work and employment, which then translate into social inequalities that entrench discrimination based on sex, race and class

COVID-19, inclusion and workforce diversity in the cultural economy: What now, what next?

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the cultural economy poses a significant threat to inclusion and workforce diversity. This article combines pre-COVID-19 research with emerging industry and policy evidence to identify where key impacts on inclusive practice and, consequently, workforce participation and advancement in the cultural economy are likely to occur. The article demonstrates how considering the cultural economy’s typical business models and resultant work and employment practices allows understanding that the inclusion and diversity impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will be driven by more than workers’ differing abilities to buffer short-term income insecurity. The article highlights four areas relevant to inclusion and workforce diversity that research and policy responses to COVID-19 should attend to in revising existing and designing new responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

Creativity is a skill that everyone has’: Analysing creative workers’ self-presentations

This paper discusses the research use of creative workers’ publicly available self-presentations such as documentaries or social media posts. In so doing it contributes to our understanding of how creative workers might fruitfully be researched. The paper, firstly, argues that self-presentations can provide valuable and rich insights into creative workers’ self-understanding, and thus can be of interest to creative industries researchers. Secondly, using the example of a film produced by Austrian product designers, the paper then demonstrates why researchers need to consider the processes through and contexts in which self-presentations are generated. The paper explains why self-presentations may not be treated in the same way as the first person accounts traditionally generated for social science research, and presents recommendations for how self-presentations might form parts of rigorous research designs

And … action?: gender, knowledge and inequalities in the UK screen industries

This article explores how a knowledge ecology framework can help us better understand the production of gender knowledge, especially in relation to improving gender equality. Drawing on Law et al. (2011), it analyses what knowledge of gender inequality is made visible and actionable in the case of the UK screen sector. We, firstly, show (1) that the gender knowledge production for the UK screen sector operated with reductionist understandings of gender and gender inequality, and presented gender inequality as something that needed evidencing rather than changing, and (2) that gender knowledge was circulated in two relatively distinct circuits, a policy- and practice-facing one focused on workforce statistics and a more heterogeneous and critical academic one. We then discuss which aspects of gender inequality in the UK screen industry remained invisible and thus less actionable. The article concludes with a critical appreciation of how the knowledge ecology framework might help better understand gender knowledge production, in relation to social change in the UK screen sector and beyond