BAFTA Games: How We Can All Level the Playing Field | Develop:Brighton 2024

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Fantastic. Well, hello everyone and uh welcome to this session on uh uh our BA game session on social mobility in the games industry and how we all leveling the playing level the playing field. Uh so, you know, thank you for develop for having us. Um hope you're all enjoying the weather. Uh it's nice seaside weather so I hope you're enjoying that. The good thing about games, I suppose, is we all like staying inside. So, you know, that's a plus, I suppose. Uh, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Luke Hoy. I'm the head of games at BAFTA. And yeah, so this is what we're going to talk about today. Uh, I'm going to do uh basically going to rattle through a quick introduction to the subject of social mobility or perhaps we should say socioeconomic inclusion in the games industry. uh talk about that with this wonderful panel shortly afterwards of Katherryn Bidwell from State of Play games uh Louise Bllythe who comes from the BBC and works in change management transformation there and Katherine Ellis from the advertising industry works as

an EDI consultant in that space and what we're going to follow hopefully follow that by a short Q&A if we have time uh and really want to look talk about social mobility issues in games but also discuss them in comparison to what's going on in TV and advertising and what their reactions to what we're doing are games is not an island and so we're not the only people trying to tackle these issues and So I think it's useful as ba to bring different industries together and see how we can all learn from each other. So as an introduction to that I'm going to rattle through some stuff very quickly. It'll take about 10 minutes but to start off I think it's important to talk about uh social mobility is a human story right and it it's about how people interact with our industry. So I'm going to use my career as a bit of example here's an accurate diagram of my my career to date. Uh and so talk about that so we can all just help you know pin that on on some things of what we mean. So, I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the country, the psychological north, even though it looks like it's in the middle. Uh, I grew up uh in this small town. Uh, as you can see, there's this kind of 20 mile radius around Buckton of a national park of Morland and not much.

I grew up before the internet. So, things like creative jobs, the media, and and opportunities like that weren't things that were discussed, weren't opportunities that were presented to me when I was that age. Uh, I went to a very normal school. My parents are a teacher and one works in the youth service. They got divorced when I was in my early teens. That was a bit of a messy financial situation. So we, you know, we had financial issues. We weren't the poorest of the poor, but uh we had limitations. So for example, while I went to uni and I was the first person in my family to go to university, you know, I we couldn't afford driving lessons to me as well at the same time. And if the, you know, modern fees and stuff like that had been in place, there'd have been no way I could have go uh could have gone and my life might have looked very different. Uh but yeah, so I went to university uh in the late 90s, early 2000s. Uh like I said, I was the first to in my family to go there. I did a music degree down in Hertfordshire. It's very different. But then when that finished, I didn't have any money, so I had to move back home. Uh and I worked in this factory, Froodo, not that Frodo. Uh um and it's a made brake pads. I also worked in things like kitchen porter. I was a security guard.

I was the world's shittiest security guard. Uh so, you know, uh but yeah, I tried to save up and move to London, which I did. Uh and I came to London. I couldn't get a job. So, as I said, I did a music degree. I kind of looked like I'd done a music degree. Uh but uh I you know my CV was things like you know factory work, concierge, that kind of stuff. Uh this kind of routine work and I didn't really know anything about the creative industries. I didn't know how to get in. I didn't know anyone. I didn't I didn't know what questions to ask or where to look. So I struggled for a bit and I bounced around between boring office jobs, doing data entry, reception, that kind of stuff, which I'm sure is familiar experience to lots of people before eventually finding my way into the music industry in my mid to late 20s. And this is really where I started to get a bit of a break. This was a a job that was really interesting. I learned loads. I traveled internationally. I you worked in rights and royalties uh in this space and really was kind of my break really. But eventually I decided I like the music part but I wasn't so keen on the industry part of the music industry. So I left there in the mid well early 2010s

uh and bounced around several other sort of skilled jobs by this point. I had skills. I had things I could do. Uh I worked for Do Martins. I was their global ecoms analyst. Uh I worked for 3D printing startup. I worked in medical and pharmaceutical PR. Don't do that by the way. Um, so, uh, you know, you know, I taken a bit of a risk coming out of the music industry, not sure of what I wanted to do. And then, as we know, I ended up in video games eventually after discovering the video games industry existed. So, the reason I'm talking about why I've laid this out is that on this journey there was various points of pressure, uncertainty, financial pressure, uncertainty, procarity in these job roles. You know, I didn't have any money at lots of times here. I didn't know where to go. But also, you know, at various points as well, sort of coming out the music industry, I'd saved up a bit of money. So, I had some financial security then to be able to take a risk to not know what to do next and go and try some stuff out. So, when we talk about social mobility, there's a complex story here that it's not always about the poorest of the poor and and how that works, which is obviously a part of it, but we experience this kind of things at different points in our

lives. It's not just about how much money we have, it's about the things we may or may not know about where to go. So, that's just a little run through of that. But while I was at Yuki, uh, one of the projects I led there was the UK games industry census, which hopefully many of you know. It tells us all kinds of interesting things about social mobility in our industry. Uh, the key takeaway really being that uh, the games workforce skews heavily towards people from more affluent backgrounds. Uh, this is based on standard government questions on like what your parents did when you were age 14. So it's a very common way of measuring this. I mean you have an over representation of people from uh whose backgrounds are from managerial professional backgrounds and an under representation of people who come from semi- routine and routine backgrounds or more working-class kind of jobs and this is these are both these are all way over or under the national average accordingly but that can be you know it's good to contextualize that. So if you compare that to where we are in other sectors you know uh versus the other creative industries games is right at the top of this table in terms of the the the the amount of people from uh managerial professional backgrounds. So it's top of the table in not a good way. Uh you know we're above the film industry, we're above architecture, things like that. So you're more likely to be from an affl background in games

than you are in those industries. Uh if you compare it to the wider industries, we are comparable with kind of lawyers as a concept uh for for roles in this industry. We're above management consultants, which I think is quite an achievement in some ways. Um but yeah, so you know, we're still under the BBC in other places, but you know, it's we're kind of the top of these tables in terms of the kinds of people that make up our workforce in general. You can also look at the kinds of schools people have been to and we have an over representation of people who've been to selective schools or independent and fee paying schools. We're nearly double the national average of people who have been to fee paying schools in our industry compared to the rest of the nation. And really interestingly as well you can then dig into uh how this is representative as how what level of seniority you are in the industry. And basically the more senior you get the more likely you are to come from managerial professional backgrounds and you're more likely to have attended fee paying schools. So the point there being that so like your social background isn't just a barrier to potentially how you get into the industry but to progression within the industry. So there's a factor at play there as well. Uh and of course location is a big part

of this as well. So your geographical uh location can really affect your opportunities. 58% of the games workforce is in London and the southeast. So that's where a lot of opportunities are. That's where events are. So all these other people in these other places, you know, have to travel sometimes to get to some of those events. So, you know, we talk about, you know, that's obviously comes at a cost that obviously makes things more difficult if you're not able to get to London. But this is a human story, like I said. So, this is a really good example from the great people make games video about social mobility on issue uh social mobility in our industry from Sam Greer and Chris at people make games. And we got Erin here from Media Molecule. She's now got an established career as a level designer, but she says, you know, that concept of disposable in not having disposable income never goes away. she can m maintains the spreadsheet of all of her finances and it sort of lives in the back of her brain. So, it's kind of pre-programmed now to always kind of live with this sense of procarity even though she might not necessarily have it like an immediate uh effect. And then you've got cell here saying, you know, thinking about things like imposter syndrome in the games industry. you came

into that from a very different background and you find that everyone has come from a very different background to you. You know, maybe that's that's okay in some ways, but you know, you just that that idea of not quite fitting in and not quite knowing how to talk the talk and maybe what you know, people are talking about in different ways. So, you know, that as he says makes it realize how working-class he was. So, you know, these are human uh reactions to experiences within that industry. So, it's important to contextualize that. Um, so what does BAFTA do? Um, well, we released this report in December 2023. It's called Invisible Barriers. And what we do is interview different people from across the film, games, and TV industries. Uh, you might recognize Muyu from Foam Sword over there on the right. Um, and we talk to um different people about how social mobility issues may have affected them in their journeys or the kinds of things they're doing as employers. Uh, it's an interactive report. So, as you can see, you can click on these icons and watch the conversation. So, I encourage you to go and do that and you can watch these videos. We'll hear from Moo in a little while. Um, but some of the key recommendations, it's a big report. It's about 80 pages, so I won't go through it all here, but some of the key things that come out for games, obviously

things like representation of who you're depicting in your games and content films and so forth, uh that you know, you're giving roles to people from those backgrounds to to better represent those communities. You're balance you're predicting a balanced portrayal of those experiences, so it's not all you're from the north, therefore you're sad, that kind of stuff. Uh and you know, you're providing opportunities for underrepresented creators to get involved and and so forth. Uh there's lots of stuff about access to opportunity, paid internships, supporting uh scholarships and burseries, this kind of thing that's hopefully all all fairly obvious, you know, contributing to careers events at different kinds of schools and youth groups. We do a bit of this and I'll tell a bit about that later about the stuff you can do in your workplace around imposter syndrome, making sure people have a working environment that's safe for them. they can talk to people. You encourage mentoring and I think really importantly in cons a consideration of social inclusion, social economic inclusion in leadership development programs just as you would have for any other kind of inclusion. I think it's an important you know it's important that we put it on the same level as any other kind of representation we talk about. Uh and

then obviously some the financial things you can do as as an organization making provisions for people facing hardships whether it's fi financial advice, living expenses. This can be bike hire. This can be all kinds of things that might just help people get the the support they need. Travel costs for interviews. If you're asking people to come a long way to interview at your company, then you know that's a part obviously things like auditions in the acting space. Uh and and you know a major point that's made a lot about including salary ranges in your jobs so that people know what they're applying for. I've many times seen jobs that I've gone, "Oh, that's kind of cool. I might do that." No idea how much it pays, so I don't know if I can pay the rent, so I'm not going to apply for it. Right? So, that that's that's a key factor. I love this one as a as a as a recommendation as well. Ensuring that freelancers are paid promptly and for the hours that they are eligible. So, actually pay people if you employ them to do stuff. You know, it seems like a no-brainer and things like um um delays and so forth. We also recently held a games mental health summit at BAFTA HQ in partnership with safe in our world, the games mental

health charity and we had a similar conversation to this in some ways and we we was more audience. We talked we got you know suggestions from the audience about how these different things can be tackled and some of the key themes that came up there that I think we'll get into discussing in a moment. uh we have a degree you know is a degree really required for your role are you not really looking at can these people do these tasks rather than they need to have this certain bar in their in their in their backgrounds uh the role of educators you know we all understand that you know there's often misconceptions about games jobs being all coding and technical when we have actual you know sort of uh business roles like HR finance those kinds of things but lots of jobs around expertise in games and and social skills like community management PR marketing and so forth event accessibility we kind of talked about that already but like you know discounted travel tickets you can make available online access and I think this one's really important that you know a viable career for diverse communities you know awareness of games as a vi career as a viable career is not universal I grew up somewhere where that wasn't creative industries weren't discussed really so while we know that

the games industry is spread all around the country people might not be aware about that and you know career advice in sort of lower income areas may tend towards traditional career types you know so whether it's go and work at the local factories or you know go and be a trades person or go and work can, you know, be a solicitor, that kind of stuff, more traditional roles rather than emphasis on games or other creative careers. So, things we can take forward as an industry there and think about how we do that. Um, and then lastly, the last little bit I'll talk about from BAFTA is the work we do really to uh support the industry. We do a lot of things externally. You know, we have burseries, scholarships and hardship funds that our members can apply to and for different initiatives and to support education. Uh we uh have uh support with membership fees and initiatives. So obviously if members can't pay their fees sometimes we we have the hardship funds available for that we have discounted membership prices outside of London 60 mi outside of London more. Um we do lots more activities outside of London than we've ever done before. It's something I want to continue to grow but we do a standalone games event every other month outside of London. Uh we have targets on our BAFTA membership in

all kinds of areas of representation and social uh economic status is one of those. Uh and we do some work to help people train and we do a program of school visits trying to raise awareness in different uh areas but also we do some stuff internally. We have a paid internship and mentoring scheme targeting low so socioeconomic backgrounds. We have salary transparency in the jobs we advertise. We do we've refreshed a lot of our recruitment and on boarding and that kind of stuff. We're a living wage employer. BAFTA is a big organization. We have cleaners and we have event staff and we have all kinds of things at our venue but everyone gets paid the living wage and everything we do and we do a lot of feedback within the organization and ways that the people from different communities can feedback to improve the workplace culture. So that's just a bit of an overview to hopefully frame now what we're going to talk about with our wonderful panelists who I will now join. Um so yeah, if I could just ask you to introduce yourselves while I take a seat. Kath, we'll start with you. Hi, I'm Katherine Bidwell and I am founder of the independent games company State of Play.

Thanks, Catherine. I'm Louise. I work at the BBC. I'm a print journalist by professional and I make TV shows for 10 years. And for the past 10 years, I've been working in the broadcast industry to pivot it to be even more modern, more digital, more upfront. But in those that time, in the past six years, I've been working in the field of social mobility. the two years I've been with BAFTA on the learning and inclusion talent panel supporting their work which as you can see is coming on brilliantly.
Hello. Um my name's Katherine and I've worked in advertising for 20 years. I was most recently managing partner at Macan which is a huge um global agency with about 24,000 staff. Um quite interestingly they're one of the they're the only advertising agency with a UK network. So we have a London office, a Birmingham office. um Bristol and Manchester, which we might touch on later. Um and about a year ago, I stepped down from that role and I'm studying a PhD at Bournemouth University

looking at the linkage between diversity and teams and the creativity of their output. Um and I also consult with um big brands through a consultancy called Creative Equals um like McDonald's and PepsiCo on how to make their marketing more inclusive. Um, and that often comes down to making their processes and their people uh more inclusive as well because we kind of say who makes the work shapes the work. So you can't really kind of deal with the external manifestation without dealing with the internal um processes and people.
Yeah. Fantastic. And so yeah, I think Cath got two Katherine. So CF bidwell I'm going to start with you and I we're going to talk about I know you've got a lot of thoughts around um uh job descriptions and how they work and the kinds of language to be got as part of that. I just before we start I want to show this video from our invisible barriers report from Muyu from foam sword and what he had to say about it which hopefully comes out okay.

So instead of saying oh for example like three shift gains and six years in the industry because I think even if those were good measures to search for someone the way applicants will interpret this is different based on how they are and so like I always make sure the job descriptions are written in a way like this is actually what I need you to do when you come into office work and if you if you've done that before. You can easily think, oh, you know, I can like write story for you and I think it's much easier for I think the difference between how someone that feels a lot of pressure interprets can I do this task versus am

as far as I think is a lot better.
Yeah. So, I just wonder, you know, what your thoughts are on that. Is that something that rings true with you as well?
Yes, I think it sums it up really well. Um, I was at a leadership networking event like years ago and someone came up to me and asked me what school I went to and I was really confused. I was like, why do you want to know about my local comp? You know, um, realizing he wasn't actually asking me that question. He meant what private school I went to. Um, luckily that was a few years ago and I do feel there has been a slight shift in our industry although the stats that have shown up there is maybe not as much as obviously not as much as we want but for our we're a small independent game studio and we are very task focused. So we will say you know obviously we need people to come on board with certain skills but it really does not matter whether you have a degree or not. We are looking at your portfolio. We are looking at what kind of games you make and whether we feel like they fit with

the games we're looking for. And um in the job description,
we have a yeah, we have a job description from studio.
Um so, you know, and we've even you'll have a feel for what makes a game great and that I feel like in our industry, it's really hard for me to write down what skills I have, but I know how to make a great game and I know why a game works and why it doesn't work. And it's almost um you know there's a real intuitive um element to that. And so we want someone to read that and be like okay well I didn't get this degree. I haven't shipped seven games but oh my goodness yeah I can I know how to make a great game great. And that's the sort of people we that we want to um employ at our company. So yeah we we really don't mind if you have a degree or not. So yeah um that's what we base our job descriptions on.
Yeah. And so thinking about it in that frame, I guess in terms of how people interpret stuff, you know, there's that thing where people put um you know, I'm I'm intermediate at this and I'm

excellent at that and it's kind of that means very different things to different people, but like you've not got any requirement here for you know number of ship games and a number of years in the industry. Uh you know uh the the specialisms that they have are based around what you want them to do I guess. So did you follow any kind of advice or use any resources in in how you framed this? Um yeah, Yuki had some really great resources really early on for and especially small teams, you know, we are we are game designers as well as our HR managers. So yeah, um I did get some resources for this, but again I think I just wrote it as if like what kind of job description would I like to see? So um yeah, there there was some real um help out there, but yeah, it's good to do that. And you know, obviously we need experience in certain skills. You can't just be like, "Oh, yeah." You know, but we just try to make it as inclusive as possible. And I hope that comes through.
I think it does a really good job of explaining the kinds of environment you're going to be working with, the

kind of tools you're going to use, the kinds of outcomes that you're going to get from that. I suppose to to Louise and and Katherine here, like thinking about this and what reflections do you have on sort of taskled job descriptions from your industries and is that something you push for? Is that something you see a lot of in in your sectors? Maybe Luis does that.
Uh yeah, thanks Luke. It's an interesting question, isn't it? Um certainly what we've moved towards is putting first of all salaries against jobs, whether that's early career or mid-career, so that people from a low socioeconomic background know what they're getting themselves into. We've pushed for um and and got now adverts that we you you're probably aware that lots of adverts for job adverts already go through a gender decoder because to make sure that they're equally appealing to to females as to males. So also to think about how the language in your job advert lands with people from a low socioeconomic background. Are you really kind of looking for polished performers?

And that tends to be a code for people who've been to public school. Is that something that resonates with you guys? And like I'm really interested to know something about the you you guys here to know who we're talking to like um
so I guess if you work in a games company you want to raise your hands a good and if you work in organizations that support the industry like me
lovely bit of a mix and um and your interest in this field do you come from a low soio economic background I'm not outing anybody I'm just looking to sort of connect like lovely free school meals first in the our family to university. Hi honeys. We have to kind of think about how we work together and build different networks and I think BAFTA's really helping us do that to raise those kind of questions. So also in terms of where you put the job, how you phrase it, one of the things that's made a big breakthrough for us is where we advertise.
Yeah.
Where are the people that you want to bring in and are you thinking carefully

about where they are? And and in order to do that, of course, you've got to know your gaps, Luke. So you have to know who's in the business for already and therefore who's missing from your business. Does that make sense?
Yeah. I think that leads on really well to to what we're going to talk about in a second. But like I don't know before we just jump into what's coming up exciting reveal just any further reflections on on that before we jump into
Yeah, I think um actually individual advertising agencies are probably quite bad or the job description writing. Um luckily we do have an industry body that's making um a lot of progress in this area um called the IPA which is the Institute of Practicing Advertisers. Um and I think what we've realized is actually leaving it to higher education to recruit graduates is too late because a lot of people from lower soioeconomic backgrounds don't study creative subjects or tech technology subjects um at university if they go to university at all. So actually where we're trying to make a lot of interventions is that preGCSE because if they study creative

subjects, social science subjects, technological subjects at GCSE, then they're more likely to progress through higher education and careers um which harks to Louis's point about where you advertise. So, the campaign that Luke's going to show is um we actually worked partnered with Tik Tok um which is where a lot of the kind of 14-year-olds are these days um and worked with um influencers who were already big. They weren't associated with advertising. They were just big influencers um creators in Tik Tok. Um and actually we were really mindful of having a good spread of regionality as well because I think there's a really big intersection between um outside of London and different soio economic um classes as well. So you'll see see the work.
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Yeah. So I think it's a really interesting campaign to kind of I think for as you saw mentioned the difference between expecting businesses to do that work about explaining who they are to you know to take on that task themselves rather than institutions that can

represent you know an industry on behalf of of that industry and so how important do you think it is that institutions like BAFTA and the other organizations that exist are are are tackling that on behalf of those industries rather than expecting that the expectation on individual businesses. I think it's really important because there similarly we're advertising is similar similar structurally to um the games industry where there's lots of small independent companies and actually they don't have human resources um people um they don't have the expertise so actually they really rely on as Kath was saying um the industry bodies for advice and guidance on best practice in this area also what I think is really good is we kind of have unified action so the step into ad program. We have a day called advertising unlocked where we open our doors to um secondary school students. So advertising agencies reach out to their local schools and we invite them in. We set them briefs and it's one day a year when when we just invite people in and it kind of lifts the lid on what

are the jobs in advertising because actually similar to the games industry, people aren't aware of many of the roles and actually they don't they can't see themselves in the traditional maybe games developer role or advertising creative role. Sure,
but there's loads of other roles there that that might be fit for them that they don't know about.
Yeah, that's definitely a theme that came up in some of the discussions we've had. Cather,
and I think um that's that sounds a brilliant idea and that's something that the games industry could easily introduce, you know, bring it in. And I bet in this room if we all said, "What's your job description?" We've probably all got completely different job description. And if if like you say pre GCSE you know you want to be a QA for e you know ex games company nobody's got a idea of what that is. So if you can actually break down these rule these roles and especially in these um social um economic areas um people realize they can do that. Oh I can do that. That's just taskbased role or you know I've got great skills of this. So I think it's really important to get into secondary

schools early on for our industry.
I think it was really interesting as well in the use of influencers in this campaign. So it's people that young people are already engaging with and opening that door to sort of say, you know, if this person can understand this thing, you can follow this person. This is one I like and I respect and I can follow that journey with them. Louise,
um yeah, I would echo that. And also if we're talking about early careers in entrance in in early careers, it's so important to think about where you're putting your energy because you've only got so much energy, right? So so in the television industry, the BBC and then BAFTA and so many other organizations are really focused on schools and colleges with a high pupil premium because as you can see from the stats, there's not much issue in the television industry for people from a professional background. they find their ways in pretty well is you've got we're creating doors for people who aren't already there. Does that make sense?
And so that's where the effort goes. So

our apprentices, they do their outreach to other apprentices from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Our share your story program, the BBC did that for the 100th anniversary, went to hundreds of thousands of pupils across the UK, only in areas with a low pupil premium. That's high free school meals and a a high unemployment rate.
Yeah.
Um and you can see that actually sparing dividends in the shows that we're making.
Yeah. Sure. And so you've led an initiative at the BBC called Raised, you mentioned it earlier, that tackles social and economic diversity in the sector, promotes underrepresented audiences and careers. Can you just tell us a bit about how that was formed and how that works? Yeah, Luke's talking about uh an organization inside the BBC called Raised Real Action in socioeconomic diversity. It's an ERG, an employee resource group. Is that something that the games industry has? Do you have organizations with staff networks inside the Oh, good. I'm seeing nods. Thanks, Venice. So there's always

been I say always for the there's wellestablished black Asian and minority ethnic staff networks in the television industry and staff networks for people who are deaf, disabled and neurode divergent as well as pride networks. So the most recent has been the ability to establish staff networks for people from a workingclass background. And I'm proud to say the BBC is the first place that did it six years ago. We were formed five years ago, the race network, and it promotes the interests of staff from and colleagues from a working-class background and also audiences that are working-class audiences. That's UK based. So whether those audiences and those communities have been in the UK for one generation or 20 generations, there's a great deal of of homogeneity around the values of those working-class communities and audiences. They tend to be communities that value relatability, value warmth, they value all a rising tide, rising all boats. Does that kind

of phrase sound familiar to you? And also don't value self aggrandisement. So it's very difficult to get people come and tell us about how well you're doing. Oh no, no, I can't possibly. People will think I'm a bit odd. It's not it's not for everyone. So there's lots of lots of um common values and we've been able to use that as a platform to give confidence because we've been able to show people who are the people inside BBC and then in the wider industry who have a working-class background who are successful who are reliable who do a great job who really cut through and with the sort and with the advent of people that you can look at and see and go oh do you know what they're top they're really good it has built confidence among a group of people where you can see that so many people do come from what they call profession national backgrounds AB uh AB and C1 backgrounds.
Yeah, I think that's you know as well as the touching you touched on a little bit there that intersectional nature of this that you know soioeconomic stats is interlin with lots of other areas of underrepresentation, ethnicity, gender

diversity, all that kind of stuff. Kath Bidwell, I wanted to just kind of come back to games a little bit on this and so what sort of interventions that have existed in the games industry that we've talked a little bit about before like that kickstart and like what interventions do you think have been the most successful that we've done and what else would you like to see?
Um I think into games had a great kickstart one but again that funding kind of um ended in uh 2022 I believe. um that was a really great um initiative to kind of give burseries to people to get their um foot foot into the industry which was really good. I think us too are doing some brilliant work with local South London schools and again offering burseries offering mentorship and insight into the games industry and again they're a very small relatively small company and they they're able to do that. Yeah. Um and also devices for all campaign that Yuki did where actually you know it's expensive to have a laptop it's expensive to um you know

have software licenses and things like that and actually their initiative was um for old you know um soft um hardware and software from companies to be donated and passed on because that's the real barriers you know of yes I want to design games but literally
I can't afford to do it.
You don't have a laptop, you're going to find that difficult.
And you don't want this to become a hobby hobbyist, you know, kind of um for the elite that if you can afford it, yes, you can become a games designer. So, they're all really good initiatives and there's lots more out there that um that that I'm sure I I haven't got the information on right now, but again, I think we've all harkeded slightly about the education as well and getting you know, creative um education up the agenda and seen as important. And hopefully with this new government, they've got some great things coming up.
I think it's uh going to be interesting time certainly as we as we embark into a

new world. Yes.
Um, so we'll come back to that again at the end hopefully. But, uh, so Katherine Ellis, I want to come back to you. Uh, we talked about the PhD you mentioned earlier, which I've got a summary of that you kindly provided me before this. So, this is kind of looking at how diver like diverse teams can influence creative thinking in organizations and whether that is true and like what evidence there is to support that. So, maybe you could just talk a little bit about what you're trying to what you're aiming for.
Yes. So um we all assume um in the creative industries that um the more diverse a team, the more creative the output. There's no evidence for that in the um creative industries at all because we're underfunded for research. Um all the evidence that we have is either based on financial performance or it comes from STEM industries. So, I'm looking to build an evidence base so we can have a more educated discussion about actually what is it that makes you different and what is it that enhances your creative abilities or makes you think in a different way to someone else. And my research, what I want to do is turn a lot of research on its head.

So, I'm actually just going to focus on the best case studies. So I'm working back from um the campaigns lorded as the most highly creative in the advertising industry and actually mapping for the first time what was the diversity within that team and not just the stuff that we look at in censuses. So all the advertising senses look at ethnicity, they look at gender, but actually social class is a completely forgotten element of um diversity because it's not visible. it's not a protected characteristic and most organizations don't really monitor it. So I'll be looking at um those type of characteristics and then correlating that to people's cognitive abilities. So there ways that they think creatively there are tests to do that and learning okay from those teams how did you make it work? How did you make the team dynamic work? How did you overcome conflict? Because what we do know from studies is that actually making putting diverse more diverse teams together can

increase conflict. It can make working more difficult. People can have less job satisfaction because of the conflict. So diversity is difficult. And what I want to do with my research is look at the ways how high functioning teams have overcome that and what we can learn from that so we can recreate that environment within other working environments. Bring diverse teams together.
Yeah. And I think that rings very true in games and and the different kinds of outputs we see in games and you talk about on-screen representation and authenticity of experience that kind of stuff. So I'm going to move on from this very quickly actually because we've only got a few minutes left and I want to talk about this really with you Louise um talking about some of the areas of underrepresentation. We're talking about them. This is a work BAFTA does uh with young people. So we have a young BAFTA initiative and it's like young game designers is part of this which is a national competition for young people and it's all about basically transferable skills that we can teach through exciting young people about games and other creative industries because the more transferable skills they learn the more life opportunity and

employee employability that will increase. Uh and we do things like in young game designer. So this is things like active listening. So taking a brief collaboration, working in group activities, that kind of stuff. But the important bit is this where we do it. And so we use the the ratio of free school meals in in schools as a measure of where we we hold these events. So from May to June this year we're in Derby leads Manchester Nottingham at schools uh where the the free school meals ratio was double the national average and from September we'll be in these other places Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Hastings, London where the schools will be going to have an average of 60% uh free school meals which is again over double and so Louise I wanted to kind of talk to you about these kinds of metrics as measures and what ways we can you how we can identify where to intervene in whether from the BBC's point of view or just in in from James,
that's a lovely question, Luke. I have to say I love a good metric. You know, they say like what isn't measured isn't attended to. It just

doesn't get done. And um we found that once we measured the socioeconomic diversity, we started to measure socio dynamic economic diversity in the BBC. Then Sky and ITV, other organizations followed suit and it was really interesting to be able to see that as a distribution across entry level, mid-career level and senior level and to correlate it with black, Asian and minority ethnic understanding and disability to be able to have a sense of which gender from where was getting on. And it won't come as a surprise. I'm sure you understand the archetypes in the industry and it turns out it's pretty similar to the games industry. So, such an important step to move out of London and I say that because London's quite an affluent area. 52% of the population of London was born outside the UK. So, it's super diverse as well. So, you are getting a diversity of thought, but are

you getting a diversity of economic background? And that's what's motivating BAFTA and so many organizations like yours, Katherine, to move out and to to reach into other communities. If you reach a community that's got a low socioeconomic diversity, that's where you're going to find black, Asian, and minority ethnic people over represented for the population. And people with a disability are over represented for the population. What that says about our heritage as a postcolonial nation, we can only speculate. That's another conversation. But that's
we have two minutes so I think we'll probably get back one there. We'll leave it on there. But that's the reason why BAFTA and other organizations are making such a strides. It's been 10 years since the BBC started. It's across the UK. And just on this point when we're sort of thinking how far the BBC's moved, it's now measured its SED.
It set targets for it and it measures its senior leaders against their delivery of that. But that's that's for people who work there. In terms of audience, it's made it more we've made

us more able to make the moves that give you the economic and creative dividend. Like looking at Waterloo Road, you know, they've moved it to Sulford and put 75% of that production spend into that area. Hundreds of school kids through as extras, hundreds more young people through getting experience the television industry as well as a significant number, not huge, but 20 people came through on trainee ships into the television production industry as well. I like that stat. It's just a sort of a point of honor, but 75% of the of the young people, people under 25 that touch the production, they're from low socioeconomic backgrounds and would now consider working in the television industry. It's a very conscious sort of pathfinder project.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it really breaks down that barrier. I want to uh we've got five minutes left. So, uh I'm going to go to Q&A. Uh so, we have a microphone which is being waved over here, but if you can put your hands up and just wait for the mic, that'd be great. So, go for Chris down the front.

Hello. Oh, that was a great panel. Thanks so much. Um I just wanted to ask for your thoughts. Um, given the current context of the games industry, the last 18 months, we've seen an estimated 20,000 uh people being laid off. And even if we do educate people from uh working- class backgrounds that there are jobs here, even if we do get out to them, you you wouldn't blame them for looking at an industry that's jettisoned that many people and think, whoa, I can't take that kind of like incredible risk. So, yeah, given that context, uh what else can we be thinking about? uh in terms of approaching those communities today.
G
um that's a really good question. Yeah, it's a really tricky thing to to to fulfill but you know um the industry always has fluctuations and that's it and I think actually now we need to make the steps to ensure we can't we can't just kind of forget that

um that area and I think um we need to make schemes now that will survive you know five years time not just like reacting suddenly to this present thing. But yeah, job job job security is a real worry when you're from a low soio economical background and you know and I think you making sure internships are paid for or like if you're losing money as a um company don't go back to like yeah let's get lots of free work experience. It's not it's not good. So just keeping those kind of principles of okay, we we will continue to to work towards this um fairness um I think is really important. But yeah, I think there's still jobs to be had and this is fingers crossed a shortterm blip in our industry, but it's across kind of the creative industries as well at the moment. So yeah.
Yeah, definitely. And I think you know that certainly when we're talking about the education process you know like you

say hopefully this is a fairly short period you know a couple of years or whatever it might end up being but you know in 5 10 20 years time when those people are in different roles different levels of their different places in their lives you know we I think we're all fairly sure games will still be around and we'll still be making them. So there's creating an opportunity for that workforce of the future to be more representative of the people that they're making games for. I don't know if you guys had any other thoughts on that or we can take another question.
I just want I just say I take heart from KPMG. It's not often you take heart from consultants but KPMG do a great deal in the area of social mobility and they're working with an organization that's pointing out the tens of billions lost to the UK economy because we aren't infranchising people from working-class background. So, I think that mobilizing this as a thought is going to increase our economy and that's where I'm putting my hope and energy.
Any other questions we've got in the room? Uh, yeah, down down the front if

we take that. Thank you.
Hello. Yeah. Uh, thank you very much for today's panel. um as someone who's sometimes in a hiring manager position, I wonder like um once you get into those interview stages and stuff, have you got any advice for um beyond making sure those interview panels are diverse so you're seeing a bunch of different people on the other side of the table? Um and um yeah, have you got any tips for beyond the job application for a company looking to hire to? Yeah. To bringing in diverse candidates and and getting them through the interview process once they're in there.
I think one of the points you make about having a representative um interview panel is really important and I think that's important as well when you have kind of panels deciding on promotions too. So a retention um thing as well. Um one uh one element that's been kind of found by various uh probably KPMG and Harvard Business Review studies um is

that actually without that um it's best not to talk about interests and hobbies at interview because actually they are very classed if you see what I mean because you know someone who has been to lots of cultural things or may have enjoyed sailing or those kind of things probably but not best to talk about it's actually probably better to focus on those kind of task related skills and things that are more relevant to um to the job because people from a lower socioeconomic background won't have been on gap years and things like that. So, you know, that's one kind of area that I'd say avoid that judgment and focus more on the the role you're talking about.
Yeah, we've got I say Luke, one of the tests you would say is at what age did you learn to ski? And if you learn to ski at three, it's a very different experience from learning to ski at 35 when you paid for it yourself. One of the things that is really important is to understand how you're going to pivot your senior leadership and your leadership so that

they open themselves to a new lens and a new new languages and new ways of thinking.
Yeah. Great. Well, just had the times up sign waved. Uh so, thank you very much for attending today. Thank you so much to our panelists for being so great and I hope you've enjoyed today and you found some useful takeaways. Uh do come and talk to us at BAFTA and do come and talk to our panelists if you've got any questions or thoughts or you know ways we can all move forward. Um, so yeah, thank you very [Applause]