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Why is the board and founding team at the new Creative Industries Federation 85% male, asks Chrissie Tiller.

Call me a 1960’s dinosaur, but I’ve found it quite entertaining in the last few days, to see Time magazine backtracking like mad for its inclusion of ‘feminist’ in its ‘words to be banned poll 2014’. Seems the ‘nuanced’ debate intended was somehow ‘lost’ in translation.

A less encouraging déjà vu experience, was to follow your link to the Director of the newly minted Creative Industries Federation, John Kampfer’s article in this week’s Guardian. And thence to the website. Of course, I totally understand a ‘hard headed and practical’ ‘army’ of ‘leaders’ is needed in the vanguard of any movement. But a board and founding team that’s 85% male? Even Parliament manages 20% female representation these days. 

Maybe it’s all intentionally post-post-modern? And the ladies (and the disability organisations and everyone else) are just waiting in the wings, like pantomime dames, to see if we ‘got the joke’?

Or maybe it’s just a case of back to the drawing board, boys? For an organisation committed to championing ‘diversity’ and ‘access’ and puncturing ‘complacency’ it’s hardly the best of beginnings.  
 

Chrissie Tiller is a consultant specialising in arts, culture and participation.

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