A Class Act? Reflecting on Socio-economic Inclusion at Edinburgh TV Festival 2024

It’s brilliant to be at the Edinburgh TV Festival 2024 - my first time here in person. It’s been a mixed set of emotions for me in fact. Working deeply in TV on talent inclusion, I’m acutely aware of how many people in our sector don’t get to attend this key moment each year. And despite working in senior leadership roles for over a decade now, I’d not been able to afford the ticket price, let alone travel and accommodation to attend as a freelancer and then small business owner.

With the financial crisis starting to bite hard this time last year, I felt so strongly about financial exclusion that I wrote to the festival organisers to suggest a more equitable pricing structure to meaningfully include TV professionals wanting to attend the festival, who are not being paid for by big labels or broadcasters. I also asked the team to look at geographical inclusion (it’s much harder to get to Edinburgh if you don’t live in London, or Edinburgh!) and to reflect on who from our industry is/isn’t in the room. To borrow this phrase from the Disability movement - nothing about us without us. If this is the place where the future TV agenda is decided, more voices from across career stages, genres and geographical bases need to be in the room, seen and heard.

So I was really happy to see that this year the festival had introduced reduced Freelance and Small indie rates as well as an Access rate for those of us identifying as D/deaf, Disabled and/or Neurodiverse. Not a moment too soon, given the alarming financial impacts of an industry in flux being felt by so many freelancers, indies and talent from under-represented groups.

But at £686.40 (incl booking fee and VAT) these options still represent a hefty investment and a tough decision for so many people, who do not have cash reserves or employer backing to attend what is billed at the most important industry event of the year.

This brings me neatly to the theme of this blog and what appears to be the pervasive theme in fact of this year’s festival - socio-economic inclusion.

At the introduction yesterday, Creative Director Rowan Woods said there wasn’t one main theme to the festival - but comedy writer Jack Rooke, whose session followed after, made clear that there is a major theme - it’s class.

Scanning the programme - I have no doubt. Session titles include The C Word (Class), Silent Prejudice: Can Investment in Training; Skills Help Break TV’s Class Ceiling, and the cornerstone McTaggart lecture by James Graham on social class and regionality - as well as deep discussions about the freelance workforce in crisis, and the future funding, shape and size of our sector.

I’d say this year we’re fully on the money. This festival is about the socioeconomics of TV. Where the money is coming from; what gets funded and how, who gets the jobs and who is/isn’t at the table when this all gets decided.

So this is my message to all those on stage, and behind the scenes, who are really shaping the state of things to come, in 2025 and beyond.

Please think deeply and carefully about the words you use, the signals you send and the activities that you commit to. Class, and discussions about class and socio-economic privilege are difficult, loaded and often have the danger of becoming ‘them and us’ type dialogues. 

I don’t want performative schemes or fanfare statements. I want to work in a sector, to paraphrase Jack Rooke yesterday, that is ‘kind, considerate, gives people options and a safe space to make mistakes.’ 

Meaningful and consistent socioeconomic inclusion absolutely depends on our culture of support for talent at all stages of their career. Our failure to do this work well so far is due to so many intersecting things - but one of the stumbling blocks with working class inclusion behind the scenes may be our outdated labels and conceptions around class and privilege.

Socio-economic inclusion is hard to measure, categorise and define. No one’s identity exists in a bubble, someone’s ‘social currency’ changes over time and ‘fixed’ labels can therefore be dangerous and misleading.

Trying to ‘tick-box’ socio-economic inclusion doesn’t work. Our socioeconomic status changes throughout our lives - for women it is often negatively impacted by becoming a primary carer. For Disabled people your lives are just more expensive. It takes more money to get places and do the stuff you need, with the support you need to do the same job as non-disabled people. Due to historic racism that still pervades in the form of invisible structural barriers at work, there’s an ethnicity pay and progression gap.

I have often pondered how to accurately describe my socioeconomic journey. The first of four daughters of a Kenyan-Goan immigrant to the UK, we grew up in Redditch - where no one to my knowledge had ever worked in TV, or had contact points with the sector.

But I had a great local school. I had teachers who encouraged me to write. I went to dance class and a drama club. By the mid 90s my Dad was running his own company and discussions about me going to university were real and possible.

At university I was still probably the only person from Redditch - but I had access to professional opportunities, creative people, and got my first job in the media working for Galaxy Radio in Bristol aged 19. I was on my way and had social mobility. I now live a very middle class lifestyle, but with a visceral awareness of where I came from, how hard I have worked, how prohibitive it was financially up until age 40 to start my own company and age 44 to attend this big sector event.

Jack Rooke shared a similar journey - son of a cab driver, his mum widowed in her 50’s, and no one in his family/community working in the arts or media. But he had what he describes an ‘M25 privilege’ - he could jump on a tube and get access to gigs, the arts scene and bit by bit, he met people who could help him grow and nurture his raw talent. 

He made the point - that this Redditch girl often also felt - that if you don’t have automatic access to these social currency things - maybe you live in the countryside or a seaside town for example - the climb is steeper, longer and lonelier.

Jack also reflected on the way we currently engage with working class stories and people: “TV is good at talking about it/us, but not practising it’. A swathe of reports from the last two years have confirmed that we have a problem with engaging with and retaining talent from working class groups. The reasons are nuanced and complex - but a real win this year at Edinburgh would be not just to talk about the challenge, but to start to put into place tangible, collaborative action plans that unpick the biggest blocks to socioeconomic inclusion - be they the cost of getting in; the length and style of contracts; or the ways we treat people in the workplace.

As I write, the panel on the stage are warning against it remaining a ‘TV elite’ having access to make premium content and just a privileged few making the big decisions, and so many excellent people being left behind as we move into the new era of TV and digital.

I’m all ears, Edinburgh. I’m hoping you’ll be stirred into action too.