The TV Foundation, the charitable arm of the Edinburgh TV Festival has announced a new initiative, inspired by the MacTaggart Keynote from James Graham.
Graham, who’s written plays and TV series including Sherwood, Dear England and Brexit: The Uncivil War delivered the MacTaggart Lecture calling on more opportunities for working class people.
He said they were “everyone’s least favourite diversity and representation category” and that more needed to be done to approach class and social mobility.
The TV Foundation said it had put in 18 months of preparatory work ahead of the launch of the Impact Unit, which will create a permanent function to “shape the way the TV industry works to make it open to all; a place where new perspectives, ideas and stories thrive.”
It will be led by Gemma Bradshaw, who joined the TV Foundation from One World Media last year.
“The MacTaggart Lecture is unique in its power to effect change and influence conversations taking place in television. James Graham’s brilliant speech today joins the ranks of those most resonant of speakers who have been willing to reach inside themselves to make a difference,” explained Campbell Glennie, CEO for the TV Foundation and the Edinburgh TV Festival.
“The launch of the Impact Unit is the culmination of months of work evaluating what the TV Foundation can be doing to address pressing issues head-on. We want to provide a collaborative umbrella to take forward all the intersectional issues around class and social mobility that we are exploring this week at the Festival and convene a passionate group of people to effect real change. Edinburgh is a brilliant marker for progress and we’re looking forward to supporting those who are also hungry for a fairer industry.”
The Unit will explore the barriers to progression and set up a “pan-sector working group” next month.
It will contribute to developing measurements and monitoring and highlight the organisations in TV which are “Class Confident,” and establishing a set of expectations that employees can consider in career planning.
There will also be a Social Mobility Bursary for the TV Festival to start in 2025.
