is CEO of the UK’s lead film organization, the British Film Institute. The core British funder promotes and preserves filmmaking and TV in the country and is essential to the flow of production, distribution, and education. Roberts became CEO in 2019 after joining the organization in 2012. He has been a key player in helping to develop the BFI’s diversity targets.
However, the report identified where there is comparatively low level of engagement with people from underrepresented ethnic groups – including in lead roles on screen and in leadership and creative roles behind the camera. We have therefore committed to assessing how we can strengthen them to drive change.
Just over 50% of our staff who identity as an underrepresented ethnicity have been furloughed. With almost 60% of all our staff currently furloughed, 15% of those are from underrepresented groups.
DEADLINE: How much money does the BFI give to supporting Black organisations and product as a percentage of its output?For feature films we supported in 2019/20, 28% of the production awards and 20% of our development awards went to teams from underrepresented ethnicities – these percentages are taken from data provided by writer, producer and director of each projects. 67% of production awards to debut directors went to directors from underrepresented groups.
From our position of encouraging and processing applications from screen organisations across the breadth of our work, we can see there continues to be a significant lack of people of colour in leadership roles in larger and more established film organisations, which is something we need to support the industry to address.: A fundamental and strategic aim of the Audience Fund is to support organisations and activity which reaches audiences of colour across the UK, which it does.
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