Sherwood writer, James Graham, used his MacTaggart Lecture at this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival to target the lack of working-class representation in the TV industry.
Graham argued that social class is “everyone’s least favourite diversity and representation category” when it comes to discussion on diversity, equity and inclusion in the television sector.
He said that a person’s “socio-economic background is not simply the financial circumstances you grow up in, the labour of your parents. It is – a culture, similar to that of growing up in a particular faith, or nationality, ethnicity – – all of which, of course, crossover and intersect with social class. It is a culture. And the cultural reference points you grow up with.”
But, he argued, “we quite often still exclude it from industry measurements around diversity.”
He pointed out that according to Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre figures, only 8% of people working in television are from a working-class background and “that compares with the between 46-49% of British people, who identify as working class. So, almost half of the population” and that this is “the lowest percentage of people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, in television in at least a decade, likely longer.” He also pointed to figures showing that in parts of the cultural sector, “sometimes only 22% of the workforce went to a state school” despite 93& of the general population being state school educated.
He argued that there have been “leaps forward in representation, courtesy of the passion, time, and effort, of so many people. People in this room. The chronic under-representation of those from ethnic minority backgrounds, on and behind the screen, has increased by 15% in the past few years. Representation of LGBTQ+ people, and characters, has increased too. Those who identify as disabled have seen a slower rate of increase, at only 1.1%. But advocates like Jack Thorne, and Rose Ayling-Ellis, are identifying it, fighting for it, making gains in it.”
He said that “whether any of these statistical increases come with real power, and agency, whether those representations are positive, authentic, is another matter of course” but “it’s important to identify progress when it occurs as it motivates the belief that more is possible.”
He went on to say that “compared to other areas of under-representation, when it comes to class… I feel like we just don’t feel it, as much. In our bones. It might be that British embarrassment over ‘money’ thing; we’re uncomfortable, whereas other, more visible, sometimes simpler to define areas of diversity fire up the activist in us. The fight seems purer, the target real.”
He argued that while “the stratas of class are varied, and vast” that “doesn’t mean we can any longer fail to find a way to make them as equal a marker of diversity and inclusion, in the monitoring of our employment practices, in our targets for commissioning and grants, and in our awards.”
He argued for a “proper, industry-wide standard, and plan” to tackle the lack of TV industry workers from lower socio-economic backgrounds as it is “the category of representation with the largest disparity between make-up of the country and make-up of our industry. Yet it is the only significant category not to be formally included in most of our standard measurements of diversity.”
He said the industry must “begin to recognise class as a consistent, and specific characteristic in our diversity monitoring forms” so that “it becomes not only an aspiration, but a concrete part of industry tent pole organisations like BAFTA – who have already shown provable progress in these areas – when it comes to membership, and nominations.”
He said he “would welcome the resources and expertise of those in the television and film industry to help get the funding to build something and keep it running – as a statement of intent toward change, as much as a genuinely valuable resource.”
Because, he said, it’s an issue that “must be cracked, for the same reasons we know the value of it being cracked in other areas. If you see a person, or a character, who looks like you or sounds like you on screen, whose experience or dilemmas, or joy, reflects your own… you feel more seen. There is a catharsis there, for audiences. A validation. And an opening-up for potential future creatives and workers, of the psychological block that prevents you from even imagining such a job, a future, in the first place.”
Picture: Shutterstock for Edinburgh TV Festival
Jon Creamer
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