Academics, UK media diversity needs YOU!

In 2014 I gave oral evidence to the Commons culture committee with Lenny Henry and Pat Younge about media diversity. 

At that committee I cited the work of Professor Irena Grugulis and her study “Social Capital and Networks in Film and TV: Jobs for the Boys?” in which she identified a relationship between the time it takes to staff up a project and the diversity of the team. She also showed how the time between “green-lighting” a project to when it goes into production had shortened over the years. Previously there could be several months between a commission and needing to fully staff it, now that time has been reduced to an average of just two weeks, with a detrimental effect on diversity.

After I gave my evidence I was contacted by a journalist at Broadcast (the industry “bible” for people working in television in the UK) who was genuinely surprised that I had quoted an academic study and wanted to know more.

For me that example perfectly illustrated the lack of practitioners drawing on the wealth of academic work to inform their policy decisions and working practices. My quoting of an academic paper was such a rarity that it warranted genuine surprise by people working in the sector.

Thankfully, six years on, that is beginning to change. 

Establishing the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity in March 2020 at Birmingham City Univeristy, followed by the launch of Representology - a Journal for Media Diversity in conjunction with Cardiff University, was a conscious effort by everyone involved to bridge the gap between academia and practitioners. 

It is not an easy place to situate oneself. We are regularly approached by media organisations who want the academic rigour associated with a body situated within a university but want the advice in a few weeks. At the same time there are certain sections of academia who are clearly suspicious of the work we are doing and whether we are championing the experience of practitioners over years of academic research.

No one said it would be easy.

But our end goal is to increase the level of people from underrepresented backgrounds working in the media and we believe that academia has a vital role in achieving this. 

We are aware that Representology - a Journal of Media Diversity is read by senior media executives who would never normally pick up an academic study - however relevant it might be to their work. 

To this end, we are calling for more submissions for the journal which can reach a unique  audience that can have the real possibility of changing the industry. Find out how to submit here.