ScreenSkills’ partnership with The Adobe Foundation – By Laura Mansfield, CEO, ScreenSkills

ScreenSkills has always been committed to creating opportunities for people to have a career in the screen industries irrespective of their background or level of educational attainment.

The programmes that the Adobe Foundation supports will not only create specific training and development opportunities for people from underrepresented communities across the UK, but also contribute to the ongoing debate about why inclusion is so important for this industry and help ensure a range of voices are heard. The valuable support of the Adobe Foundation will enable ScreenSkills and the Skills Funds to extend some of our most successful programmes that target underrepresented groups and extend the breadth of what we currently offer.

By encouraging people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and communities to follow a career in the creative and screen industries, we can help ensure a rich and broad range of views and experiences which can help make films, tv and games content a better reflection of the world we live in. But it's not just about the content we watch, a diverse and inclusive workforce helps us all to see the world from multiple perspectives and enables us to learn from, as well as respect and value the contribution of others, challenging our own and other people's potential preconceptions.

There are multiple challenges for people from minority groups, both when entering the industry; and aiming to progress into more senior roles. The statistics play that out. They may be battling against unspoken bias; they may feel they have to mask to fit in and not necessarily have mentors and role models in their own organisation. And in a way, it's progression that is harder as you're pushing against some embedded, unspoken behaviours.

That's where ScreenSkills as an organisation is working and partnering with organisations like the Adobe Foundation to give the support we can. 

But support is not just one action or intervention - we’re working in an ecology. Well-designed industry-led mentoring, training, and career developmentprogrammes can really make a difference. 

It’s important to listen and be responsive - not only thinking about what additional support people might need but also recognising what they can contribute to make the sector even stronger and more creative. And while training and development is something in my wheelhouse, it's part of a picture. This is not about labelling one group as needing 'to be trained', it's about adding additional firepower, skills and leverage to individuals and groups who are not necessarily accessing the seats at the table or the senior roles we need them to access to make longer term change across the creative industries.

Specific training, development, mentoring, and coaching are also important to ensure that support continues as people gain experience and build leadership skills. 

And finally, we need to challenge some of the informal hiring practices in the industry that create closed networks and strive to ensure that there is a supportive network of peers right across the industry and at different levels - not only to provide support but so that ultimately people from minority groups stop being viewed - and treated - as being from a minority group.