Class action: It's not what you know...

The TV industry has long been a sector where those from state school and working class backgrounds face an uphill struggle. Pippa Considine asks how TV’s class barriers can be breached

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” says Dean Webster, head of development at Ten66. “That is something you have to battle at every stage in your career.”

Webster is on the steering group of social enterprise Creative Access which supports people in under-represented groups to work in the creative industries. “Despite 50% of the UK identifying as working class, we see that often class is the forgotten element of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts,” says the founder of Creative Access Josie Dobrin.

The definition of working class is difficult to pin down and TV workers might prefer not to be labelled, so it’s easy to ignore.

This year’s MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival will be given by James Graham, who penned hit BBC drama Sherwood. He will explore the role and responsibility of TV drama in shaping the political agenda and illuminating social injustices. Timely, with the success of ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office.

Getting some balance

Graham’s message also illuminates the wrong-headedness of having a TV workforce where less than ten per cent are working class. This figure comes from research conducted by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and was reported exclusively by Channel 4 in May. It shows the numbers of working-class to be eight per cent and middle and upper class to be at its highest in ten years, at 60%.

At Zinc Media indie, Red Sauce, creative director Tom Edwards embodies the difficulty behind the definition, which is predicated partly on parents’ professional status. His parents were teachers and he went onto Cambridge University, having been educated at a state school in Liverpool. “All my reference points in my school were very much working class.”

Looking across the industry, Edwards says: “We’re in a privileged position to be producing the content….and yet we’re not plugged into who our audience are.”

Red Sauce has had great success with its Bargain Loving Brits franchise for Channel 5. “There are certain sets of stories that are obviously working class and it needs a team to make them that have lived some of that experience.” He jokes that his team only lacks someone from the middle classes.

As a former commissioning editor at the BBC, Edwards introduced Eat Well for Less, presented by working class talent in the shape of greengrocer Chris Bavin and delivered by RDF. “The creative team there got the language right, the music right, the subject and so on… Some indies can do it better than others,” he says.

“In the last two to three years, there’s been a more vocal acknowledgement that the broadcasters, especially the PSBs, do need to speak more to working class audiences.” First step, talent. Edwards cites Stacey Solomon’s rise and rise. “The next step is to replicate that behind the camera.”

Stepping up

“Instead of remaining indifferent to the issue, the industry must enact practical solutions to address the problem,” says Dobrin at Creative Access. She cites career-long support, such as mentoring, training around topics such as freelancing and inclusive leadership, supporting peer and diversity networks and “counteracting material inequalities” – paying for lunch or travel costs, relocation costs and sticking to industry freelance rates.

At the end of 2023, BAFTA published its Invisible Barriers guide, to help widen access and progression for those from low socio-economic backgrounds

Some of the report’s core recommendations are around money, including salary transparency, prompt payment and an understanding that people might not be able to take on a job if they don’t have a driving licence, for example, or can’t afford to relocate.

Finances being particularly bad right now, those with no cushion are feeling it most. A BECTU report in February showed around 70% of respondents in the industry were not working. While Film and TV Charity research at the end of 2023, with 2,000 industry workers, revealed that 45% were struggling financially, with a similar number having less than £1,000 in cash savings.

Opening doors

Fraser Ayres is co-founder and joint ceo of the Triforce Creative Network and recruitment agency Dandi, both with a mission to make TV more inclusive. Dandi has a talent pool of around 36,000 TV workers.

Ayres acknowledges that the industry has started to open up: “we’ve got more done in this last five years than in the 15 previous.” But there’s now a reset. “The slowdown is the enemy of inclusion and access,” he says. The lack of inclusive hiring has directly affected Dandi’s bottom line: the staff has reduced from seven to two in the last year. “People are actually going against inclusion to hire their friends, because their friends are in trouble.”

Triforce joined Channel 4’s emerging indie fund in 2022 and Ayres is critical of Channel 4’s lack of inclusion, as he sees it. “We were dealing with the most awful, privileged commissioners,” says Ayres. He feels that the channel is missing out on ideas that would feature, and reach, more working class and diverse people. “Channel 4 have completely moved away from the thing that would actually save them.”

Ayres is talking content and he’s inclined to think that ITV is more inclusive. One bugbear is being honest about cashflow in these tough times. “Channel 4 pretended everything was fine, while ITV told us about the slow down.”

Ayres comes from a working-class background, having lived on a social housing estate in Leicester as a child. He entered the industry as an actor and has spent decades supporting others from diverse backgrounds, including working class, into TV and film. But this new downturn has changed his tune. “Only in the last year…I’m not encouraging them anymore.”

Code breaking

While supporting workers financially is a basic if the industry really wants to open doors, there’s also a fundamental need to recognise and change the inherent middle-class codes that prevail in much of TV land.

Edwards, having worked as commissioner as well as producer, talks about “the soft way in which you either feel part of something or you don’t.” He remembers his first job as a runner. Both the series producer and one other runner were “super upper middle class…They were speaking the same language. The runner said, ‘it’s been amazing to work with you,’ and the series director said, ‘it’s been amazing to work with you too.’

“It’s a natural, inbred sense of entitlement, that this is my right, this is where I’ll go, this is what I’ll do, which you can lack if you’re from a different class background.”

He talks about code switching, changing yourself to blend with colleagues. “I remember when I became a commissioning editor, thinking what clothes do I need to wear, how do I fit in at the BBC? Inevitably we all code switch.”

Teddy Nygh is co-founder of Fully Focused Productions and Million Youth Media. He also grew up in a working-class environment. “I was aware of white privilege from a very young age,” he says. Despite being white, he struggled to get into TV. His first break was in 2008 with Viacom’s Black Entertainment TV when it was launching in the UK.

Making moves

The production work that Fully Focused and MYM do is crewed by diverse, young teams. “We wanted to ensure that we are reflecting the communities that we live in and that we’re from, unapologetically, and that the standard of the work we produce can compete with anyone else out there.” In 2022, Fully Focused BBC Three drama series Pru allowed for 60 paid placements at different levels in the production team.

Fully Focused and MYM launched in recessionary times, in 2010, and Nygh talks about the current challenges as “an opportunity to learn and grow.” In the past they’ve had support and commissions from the likes of Apple and Netflix and they’ve always had grants. “There’s always work out there, always money out there. It’s just a matter of finding out where.”

And there is no shortage of initiatives to attract under-represented groups, including those in a lower socio-demographic.

BBC Studios Production, the biggest production house in the UK, has a commitment to a minimum of 20 per cent of both on and off-screen talent, from either BAME or low-income backgrounds or those with a disability.

There are initiatives throughout the screen supply chain. MYM and Fully Focused have relationships with production companies such as the Istanbul Film Company, as well as post production houses, including Picture Shop, Run TV and Residence Pictures.

Residence and Coffee & TV launched their Pixel Pathway in May of this year, for the post and VFX community. At the launch, Cara Kotschy, Residence Pictures co-founder and md called it “an industry defining initiative,” going on to say that “a lack of investment in DE&I [diversity, equality and inclusion] and training future talent, alongside a culture of nepotism, has maintained an industry full of people from similar socio-economic backgrounds with similar lived experiences, which needs to stop.”

Up to the top

The last decade has seen more awareness, in tandem with a growing TV industry. 2024 marks ten years since the launch of the RTS bursary scheme. In that time, the RTS has supported 332 students from low-income backgrounds across TV Production, Journalism and Digital Innovation subjects, with 82% of graduates going on to secure work in the screen industries.

“It’s not enough for employers to only focus efforts on improving access at junior level,” says Dobrin at Creative Access. “The industry needs to enact specialised support, tailored to the specifics of having a career in TV, to retain working-class mid and senior talent.”

Last year, Banijay UK partnered with Creative Access to offer a year-long professional development programme for 20 TV freelancers from historically underrepresented communities who have previously worked at Banijay labels.

Charity Mamma Youth started with the intention of getting people into the industry, but is now also about sustaining them. Fully Focused and MYM underpin their activity with ongoing support for their community of young screen talent.

There are 1000 people in the Creative Access Thrive community, which offers networking and mentoring. Research shows that under-represented individuals are more likely to progress careers if they’ve used Creative Access services.

Both the BBC and Sky have assistant commissioner schemes. Given that there’s not much movement at the top of the career ladder, these schemes have allowed them to bring in diverse talent at a high level.

Recent targets and quotas at broadcasters and production companies have inspired a bubbling number of agencies working to increase diversity in film and TV. BAFTA drew on resources from over 40 such organisations for its Barriers report.

“It’s critical for third parties to step in and help support these endeavours; to hold organisations to account, provide solutions to challenges and to showcase successes,” says Dobrin at Creative Access.

The pity is that there has been recognition of the need for the industry to include more working-class people for decades. “We were banging on about the working class thing twenty years ago,” says Fraser Ayres. But, bearing in mind the recent eight per cent figure, it seems a fair reckoning that it is less inclusive than ever.

Much of progressing in TV is down to another soft skill, the art of networking.

Webster at Ten66 is emphatic about the need to glad hand. “There’s an informality to the recruitment process in TV. Everything the formal working world does in terms of that, doesn’t seem to happen in TV, for example there’s a lack of job or person descriptions for roles. This means there’s a vacuum where jobs get filled by people who know the right people or go to the right events. There’s an understanding in the industry that yes, whilst you do have to do a good job, that’s simply not enough – you have to have the networks to move up.”

And there are now more networking opportunities for people in a lower socio-economic demographic. Jaisica Lapsiwala is co-founder of The BE YOU Festival, which is now in its third year. “It provides a safe and democratic environment for people to have honest conversations about the current challenges, why it’s essential to change the status quo and how we do it. “

This article first appeared in Televisual Magazine’s Summer issue