Screening out prejudice

There’s been a concerted campaign in recent months – including on the pages of Disability Now – to get more disabled people onto the small screen. But how has that pressure translated into increasing numbers in off-screen production roles? Paul Carter reports

Television is changing. When Cast Offs, a show starring and written almost exclusively by disabled people hit the nation’s screens last year, it was lauded as a landmark moment – a watershed moment for disabled people in TV.

But dig a little deeper, and it becomes apparent that there is still a long way to go before disabled people find themselves on an equal footing in terms of programme making, covering roles such as production, researching and screenwriting.

Clare Morrow, Network Manager of the Broadcasting and Creative Industries Disability Network (BCIDN) says that the industry is working hard to improve the environment for disabled people.

“I think that we’ve come a long way in terms of it [disability] perhaps being a barrier,” she says.

“I think that production departments are now open to the idea of having disabled people as part of them, which was probably not the case, generally, five years ago.”

“I think there’s much more openness and willingness. Do the statistics support that we’re getting somewhere? Well I think it’s a very slow burn thing.”

What’s clear is that the industry has made great strides to improve more routes of entry for disabled people into the industry, with the major broadcasters leading the way.

“One of the key things is that there have been some fairly extensive schemes run by some of the main broadcasters,” says Clare.

“BBC run something called Extend, Channel 4 have the Diversity Production Scheme and have done a couple of other initiatives involving specifically disabled filmmakers.

“ITV have had something called Enabling Talent, which they’ve run for a few years and Channel 5 recently took on their first ever disabled trainee on a programme called Milkshake! There have been some considerable successes.”

Indeed, there seems to be almost unanimous praise for the work done by the industries’ big hitters – particularly Channel 4 – to increase off-camera diversity.

However, most people agree that such schemes can only target a small part of the problem.

Kate Monaghan is development director of and partner in Mark Three Media, an independent television production company based in London.

“I think that the training schemes that the BBC and Channel 4 do are excellent, and I got into the industry through the Extend scheme which gave me an amazing first job on Blue Peter,” she says. “It was absolutely wonderful, but the problem comes when you’re looking for retention after those schemes.”

Such schemes undoubtedly provide opportunities for disabled people to break into the industry that did not exist in such numbers even a few years ago. However, there are bound to be more applicants than there are places, and even those that do make it through are not guaranteed full-time employment upon completion of the schemes.

This leaves many disabled people facing barriers to entry. The television industry traditionally has a very defined career path. Most people start out in the role of “runner’, which can involve everything from making tea to helping on shoots, before progressing onto researcher and then production roles.

“The amount of disabled people that I’ve met that broke into the industry without being on Extend, or without being on a Channel 4 scheme, I think I could only name one person,” says Kate.

“The first job is a runner. If you can’t be a runner, and you can’t run all over the place and carry everything, be the tea boy or work the 12 hour days for no money that you have to do, how else do you get started?”

Nikki Fox has worked in many of the behind-the-scenes roles. She started out on Channel 4’s trainee scheme as a junior researcher and went on to work for Maverick TV as a researcher and associate producer before doing some co-presenting on the recent disability-themed How to Look Good Naked… With a Difference.

She says that she would have found it extremely difficult to have followed the traditional route into the industry.

“What would be scary is if I was running because you have to be quite physical. I think the scheme recognises that some disabled people can’t necessarily start off as runners if you’re not as physically able, so it cuts out that whole stage. It gets you straight in as a junior researcher, which then leads you into being a researcher and so you get left feeling quite equipped.”

Clearly, there still needs to be a shift in attitudes among production companies, many of which are still struggling with embracing the idea of working with disabled staff.

“When you’re going out into the world after these schemes, you’ve got a handful of production companies who are really good about disability, and they understand it and they make the effort, and places like Maverick Television and Love Productions are superb,” says Kate.

“But, equally, there are hundreds of production companies who can’t face it and can’t stand it.

“There have been production companies I’ve been to, been offered a job, and then said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you, I’ve got a disability, it probably won’t affect you but it means I can’t hold a boom, I might have to have a bit of time off to do physio or have doctors’ appointments. It’s not going to affect you that much, I don’t have days off sick and I’m very reliable, but I can’t do all the things that everybody else can do’. They then turn around and say ‘we don’t employ somebody with a disability’. I’ve had that three times.”

Jack Thorne was a co-writer of Cast Offs, the drama which first aired on Channel 4 late last year. He says that the industry is improving, but that the economy and the decline of advertising revenues is holding things back.

He says: “My disability is invisible, so production companies that hired me had no idea what my requirements were. They’re now very good around my requirements because I do have a few, and they do look after me very well but I wasn’t hired with that in their head.

“If the economic climate was better, then I think doors would be being pushed down faster. The fact that the economic climate is not great means that telly is not in a good place. They’re not making stuff – it’s not a case of not making stuff with disabled people, it’s just a case of not making stuff full-stop which is more of an issue.

“I genuinely think that people want to push down the barriers now and I really think that British TV being in the place that it is is something to be celebrated, and that they’re really getting it right at the moment in a way that other countries haven’t.”

Television, by its nature is a freelance industry. Many jobs involve working on individual series or programmes, often on short-term contracts. When production on a particular show comes to an end, so does the job and that person then has to move on.

This aspect of the industry can pose particular challenges for disabled people, particularly those with access needs as companies may be less willing to fund reasonable adjustments.

However, a new pledge drawn up in conjunction with BCIDN and the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (PACT) aims to move companies to a position where they have to demonstrate their willingness to work with people with a disability.

Clare Morrow of BCIDN explains: “The pledge is something that independent companies have to sign up to and pledge that they will take a certain number of actions to increase the diversity of their workforce.

“It’s moving to a position where it’s unlikely they will get a commission from one of the major broadcasters unless they have signed up to the pledge.

“This seems to have pushed at a fairly open door, and lots of independents have signed up to the pledge very willingly.”

Jack Thorne feels that if the on-screen representation of disabled people continues to improve, that too will help increase the numbers who want to take up a career behind the camera.

“The walls are coming down,” he says, “and the likes of Peter Mitchell and Mat Fraser will be a real boon for people off-screen.”

Nikki agrees: “It’s very important to see difference. If seeing disabled people on-screen encourages other disabled people to get into the industry then that’s an amazing thing.”

Clare says that there has been a “significant step forward” in convincing not just production companies, but also disabled people.

“What’s slightly more difficult is finding lots of suitably interested, able, aspiring people to work in the industry. There’s a bit of a mismatch. The reason we’ve been focusing quite a bit on the screen is because clearly if you do more on the screen, and you see more disabled people on the screen, then the hope is that more disabled people will think ‘oh, actually this is an industry that I can be part of’.”

“Without diversity”, says Kate, “we don’t make the best programmes that we can make because it’s all about the lives of middle class people looking down on lower class people. We don’t get the authentic voices.”