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The Creative Diversity Network (CDN), the organisation behind the UK TV industry’s Diamond diversity survey, is to begin reporting on diversity in UK film production, supported by £200,000 in funding from the BFI National Lottery Innovation Challenge Fund.
CDN’s landmark Diamond TV report is supported by all major UK broadcasters and has been running since 2016.
CDN will now begin a two-year film project working alongside Bafta Media Technology, the software R&D arm of Bafta. It will use the funding to research and prototype a system that will collate diversity data for the UK’s film production sector.
“Diamond was the world’s first diversity monitoring programme for the creative industries and has now become the benchmark tool for the UK’s main broadcasters to track their performance and adjust their strategies to ensure they are having the maximum impact,” said Miranda Wayland, CDN CEO.
“We are excited to be using our experience with Diamond to work with the BFI to develop a system which we hope will be equally impactful in the film production sector.”
The BFI National Lottery Innovation Challenge Fund supports research, consultation with industry and the testing of technology to establish effective ways to collect and report diversity data, to provide a clearer demographic picture of the sector and to help build a more diverse workforce.
The BFI has also awarded £30,000 to University of Glasgow spin-off research company Design Otherwise for its Evolving Equality project, which will review existing systems and criteria for diversity data collection. Evolving Equality will aim to identify achievements and limitations, and improve understanding of what data is needed and how data can be used to build more inclusive workplaces, led by researcher, disability activist and former chief executive of CDN Deborah Williams, alongside data protection company with Corrick Wales & Partners.
The BFI National Lottery Innovation Challenge Fund aims to support solutions to the UK screen sector’s most critical challenges. Between 2024 and 2026, up to £1.8m will be distributed to not-for-profit organisations to address up to six challenges. Its first call focused on the video games industry, followed by AI for screen archives.
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