Inclusion Accelerator – Consultancy to Product R&D

Established in Bristol in 2019 by Melanie Rodrigues, Gritty Talent has built up an experienced team of producers, production managers and talent executives who know the TV/media sector inside-out.

Their mission is to connect the best creative talent, from all backgrounds, with decision-makers in the industry. They cover all aspects of managing Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (ED&I) requirements, from recruitment through to performance monitoring, benchmarking and improvement plans.

They had already developed smart, digital tools to assist with some of the steps, but there was still extensive manual processing required and which needed their in-depth industry knowledge.

The opportunity

The West of England is a hub for TV and film production, second only to London in the number of independent production businesses, according to the latest Go West! report. These are mostly micro-businesses, supported by some 1500 freelancers. Together with anchor businesses BBC Studios, Channel 4 and Aardman Animations, they generated some £288m turnover in 2020/21.

Production companies must comply with stringent ED&I targets for the shows and media they put out. This is both to ensure fair representation on and behind our TV screens, and to appeal to diverse, global audiences. As an example, the BBC expects productions to recruit 20% of their teams from ethnically diverse, disabled and/or lower-socioeconomic groups. Production companies supplying UK broadcasters are required to report on ED&I per broadcast hour.

Gritty Talent identified that small production businesses often lacked the knowledge and reporting mechanisms to meet these requirements consistently. They wanted to explore how automation and machine learning components could improve the process. The idea of the "Inclusion Accelerator" was to disrupt how the UK's TV & Film companies act on their diversity, inclusion and talent challenges through data science-led R&D and contribute to a much-needed transformation of representation in the media.

Taking action

The R&D tackled specific technical challenges such as the lack of data on effective interventions and how to eliminate potential selection and responder bias.

They wanted to develop a seamless digital workflow to replace the current paper/manual systems used by the TV industry. The first stage was to provide an effective assessment of the status quo for a production company, then to compare this with the industry requirements.

They could then use data science to produce best practice recommendations, drawing on their extensive ED&I knowledge. This would be tested and trialled iteratively until they had a robust prototype.

The R&D was at the right stage for the Business Innovation Fund as it would create a functional prototype and validate this against synthetic data in a range of well-understood user scenarios.

The product development would be progressing from Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 to level 6, where it could be tested against real time data.

A strong application and a £30,720 award

Working with the West of England Growth Hub, Gritty Talent were awarded £30,720 Business Innovation Fund grant as their application clearly presented the need for the project and the new technology. They could establish the novelty of their approach and explain their route to market.

The R&D activities were set out in exemplary fashion showing the individual elements and how these would be synthesised into the end product. The strength of their team and their project management approach, using appropriate tools, gave confidence that the project could be delivered.

The successful completion of the project could lead to one new-to-the-business, and one new-to-the-market product, process or service. It could also lead to two new jobs being created and a potential increase in turnover of £3.6M over the following five years.

"Creative talent is the lifeblood of the UK’s creative industries, but the TV and Film sector faces a pressing societal and economic challenge concerning its talent base. Industry bodies predict a skills shortage of around 21,000 people by 2025, while reporting a current lack of representation of women, disabled people, and Black, Asian and other Global Ethnic Majority groups in production roles.

One of the problems we found was the inconsistency with which different organisations collect data around protected characteristics, making it difficult to establish benchmarks. We are now using the evidence we have gained to consolidate and standardise good practice in ED&I within the film and TV sectors.

We feel that this R&D project has been a resounding success. We have achieved proof of concept, increased the automation of our workflow and gained valuable market insights, improving our staff’s expertise. We plan to share this learning to promote understanding and help drive up commitment to ED&I with our clients.

We also have a product that is suitable for trademarking and have laid the groundwork for a second product."

Melanie Rodrigues, CEO and Founder, says