Kwadjo Dajan is a television producer who has worked for television companies including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky. This year he was awarded the BAFTA Award for Best Breakthrough Talent, for his work in producing the factual crime drama Appropriate Adult, which charted the apprehension of British serial killers Fred and Rosemary West.
It’s an award that has been nearly twenty years in the making. Kwadjo has been involved in television since he was seventeen, when during his A-levels he was selected out of 2,000 applicants for a BBC mentoring scheme, giving him advice access to a producer and the occasional trip to a film set. Even with this early boon to his career, the breaks didn’t come easy.
“After the mentoring scheme you were sort of left to your own devices to find work. And for me, I found early on in my career I volunteered to do a lot of work experience. So I’d often write off to production companies, and effectively offer my services free of charge as a way of just learning and getting a foot in the door.”
Now 35, Kwadjo made his way into television through working on documentaries, specifically fly-on-the-wall documentaries like Airport and Airline, but his ultimate goal lay elsewhere. “Once I’d directed a few documentaries, I wanted to make the break into drama. And that’s what took a few years. It’s very difficult to get into drama if you’re making that crossover, and for me a lot of it was fortune.”
not enough is being done to advise and guide young people towards the creative industries.
Kwadjo’s experiences might be seen as typical of what is necessary for individuals to break into creative industries. Certainly, he puts the cause of his success down to familiar themes: determination, a singular focus on what he wanted to do with his life, and of course, a little bit of luck. But there is growing concern amongst some industry bodies that not enough is being done to advise and guide young people towards the creative industry jobs they want to do, and that, particularly with the current economic climate, talent and opportunity is being missed because of how these industries are perceived.
A couple of weeks ago, BAFTA released a report examining how young people perceived the film, television, and games industries, in preparation for a Career Pathway Summit occurring on 15 November. The report yielded some interesting results. For example, more young people from upper and middle class backgrounds have considered a career in TV and Film, whereas the games industry was more popular amongst young people from a working class background. Meanwhile, a quarter of young people from London have considered a career in film, but only 5% for young people from Northern Ireland have done the same.
We need to make sure we get the most talented people as opposed to those whose parents can pay for them
Anne Morrison, chair of BAFTA’s learning and events committee, and director of the BBC academy which runs training in the BBC, explained to me the reasoning behind the commission of the survey. “The whole thrust of our work in the learning events committee, is to try to use our influence to make sure that we get the most talented people in the industries as opposed to those whose parents can pay for them to do a lot of unpaid work experience or who have a lot of interesting contacts in the industry.”
One of the main areas the survey looked into was professional careers advice, usually obtained from services attached to colleges or universities. The results showed that of 84% of respondents who had received formal careers advice, less than a third of those had found it to be the most useful advice they had received. Furthermore, careers advice on these industries is harder to find than all other areas of employment.
Careers advice on these industries is harder to find than all other areas of employment
While genuinely useful career advice is somewhat lacking in these areas, this isn’t entirely the fault of advice services themselves. There are many, many different routes into creative media, from joining a training scheme with a particular organisation like the BBC to simply grabbing a camera and creating something off your own back. There is also a vast array of career opportunities within these industries, from costume design and camera work in TV and film, to AI programming and concept artistry in gaming. But the industries aren’t particularly good at advertising this variety of jobs, or making the multiple entry routes clear.
“I actually think that employers, and the industry themselves have some responsibility here as well as schools and career advisors and parents,” Anne says “because we are the ones in the industry who probably have the best chance of being up to date, and being able to explain how you get in.”
A good example of this, according to the report, is that not knowing the right professional contacts is more likely to discourage people from entering these industries than not having the right skill set. It does not matter whether or not this is true; if it is believed, and the creative industries do not act to dispel this belief, then it may well lose out on a lot of potential talent.
Image credit: BBC
“It’s people who seem to have more social advantages, more confidence perhaps, that are going for a career in creative media,” Anne says. “Other people who don’t seem to fit the existing roles are being put off. The career advice insofar as people are getting it at the moment doesn’t seem by their own report to be helpful to them.”
Only 9% of women have considered a career in the games industry
Regarding fitting existing roles, the most striking result of all was specific to gaming. The percentages of men and women who have considered a career in Film and TV are more or less equal, around 33%, whereas only 9% of women have considered a career in the games industry compared to 38% of men.
Gaming’s attitude towards women, both their presence within the industry and how they are represented in games, has been discussed at length in the past couple of years, but the figures highlight very starkly that gender equality remains a problem. Anne believes the issue is down to how the industry presents itself. “The image of it is very important, because people are very influenced by the image they have of the industry when they decide whether this is an industry in which they would feel comfortable and happy in, and able to contribute to.”
To find out more, I spoke to Sophia George, chair of SwallowTail Games, a new company which emerged out of Abertay University’s “Dare to be digital” competition. SwallowTail’s first game, Tick Tock Toys, won the BAFTA ‘Ones to Watch’ award in March this year, and Sophia is planning to take part in the upcoming summit after seeing the results of the report.
“I wanted to be in the games industry because I wanted to make a difference,” Sophia says. “I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but when I was younger I really enjoyed games like Mario, Sonic, that kind of thing. As I grew a bit older I started to feel like the games weren’t being made for me. When I’d speak to people about them, that I like games, they’d be like ‘Oh but isn’t that a boy’s hobby?’”
The problem isn’t that women are actively discouraged from being in the industry – Sophia is surprised when I ask this, remarking that “It would be very sad” if that did happen – but that the way it has built itself, and the way it presents itself, passively discourages them. “Some games don’t represent women in the best way. They’re really sexualised or just useless, and there aren’t many female main characters either. So that has an effect, I think, when children are growing up.”
It’s important not to ignore new faces and voices, and the ideas they bring with them
The role of women in the games industry is a topic Sophia and the learning committee as a whole are very interested in, especially given the statistical evidence. But it is by no means the only topic. The debate is about young people in their entirety, giving them a voice and actually listening to the response. Certainly in gaming, at a time when the likes of Kickstarter is returning hordes of older game developers into the limelight, promising the return of fondly remembered franchises and feeding off a frenzy of nostalgia, it’s important not to ignore the new faces and voices, and the ideas they bring with them. “I do think it would be good for people to see from a young person’s perspective rather than the same old people you see at the Develop conferences,” Sophia says.
I do have some doubts. There’s no escaping the fact that games, film and TV are desirable and competitive places to work. The challenges of breaking into these industries have been around since the birth of “showbiz” and maybe the only realistic solution is to follow Kwadjo’s example: get your head down, get on, and as he puts it “don’t get disillusioned.” But Anne’s response to my scepticism is straightforward. “[Just] because the problem may have been around forever doesn’t mean one should not tackle it.”
Rick Lane is the appropriate freelancer for various magazines and websites. You can ask him for careers advice on Twitter.
Source : ign[dot]com
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