Enough is Enough: Let’s End the Racial, Class and Gender Bias in the Creative Professions!
Interestingly, both this week’s ‘Broadcast’ and ‘Campaign’ magazines have articles on their front pages about the startling lack of BME staff in the creative and media industries in the UK.
Whereas 44% of London’s population consists of people from black and minority ethnic groups, only around 12% of those working in fields such as television production and advertising agencies are from these minorities — and the percentage plummets when it comes to the top roles.
The lead article in ‘Broadcast’ quotes Lucy Pilkington, the factual creative director of Sugar Films, who “was ‘fed up’ of being handed an approved list of male, white directors to oversee a show”.
I have been working in publishing and marketing in London for more than a quarter of a century and, despite reading and hearing platitudes from the powers that be time and again about the need for more diversity, do not fail to notice that, even in CE 2017, when I am sitting in senior-level industry meetings, out of 12 or 14 people I will often be the only non-white person. And the only one from a working-class background.
Enough is enough. As these veritable industry publications highlight, the white, middle-class and male stranglehold on the creative industries in the UK, particularly when it comes to management level roles, must finally end. Urgently.
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