Diversity

The UK music licensing company PPL says latest staffing data shows it is an "industry forerunner" when it comes to diversity in the workplace.

The voluntarily released gender and ethnicity data for 2023 reveals that mean pay gaps – the average difference in pay – have decreased between April 2022 and April 2023.

The mean gender pay gap decreased to 5.4% in favour of men, from 11.7% in 2022, while the proportion of non-white staff has increased by 3% and now makes up 30% of staff.

The company said its senior team including executive directors and heads of department is 51% female.

Kate Reilly, Chief Membership and People Officer at PPL, said the company was "very proud of the work we’re doing to contribute to a fairer, more diverse industry".

She added: “Striving to become an ever more equitable and inclusive company is not only the right thing to do, but it is also good for business. PPL is stronger for better reflecting our membership and society at large.

"Over the coming years, we will further develop our diversity throughout all levels of the organisation."

Freelance creative workers living in the North of the UK are suffering from three significant pay gaps, a new poll has found.

Recruitment agency Major Players polled 450 digital, marketing, product and creative workers in the Midlands, North East, North, West Yorkshire & the Humber and Scotland, and found pay gaps relating to gender, ethnicity and identity.

The poll found the pay skew in favour of men working within freelance roles in the north was “considerably higher” than the UK average, at 15.9%.

An ethnicity pay gap was also found on creative assignments, with Asian, Black, Mixed, Arabic or Other background freelancers earning an average of 7.1% less than their counterparts.

The poll also revealed LGBT+ freelancers in the north earned on average 7% less than the average UK day rates. This gap was also considerably higher than the UK average LGBT+ pay gap of 1.4%. 

The statistics underscore just one aspect of the challenges faced by minority freelancers, George Greenaway-Poole, Major Player’s Group Marketing Director wrote on LinkedIn.

“I saw a recent statistic which said that more than 35% of the LGBTQIA+ community hide their sexuality at work in fear of negativity or discrimination,” he said.

He added that for those who were ‘out’, repeatedly sharing aspects of their identities can be “emotionally draining”.

He suggested that businesses could help alleviate the pressures on LGBT+ workers by asking people for their pronouns, using inclusive language and gender-neutral terms and including visual cues in work settings, such as hanging rainbow flags.

Revolution Performing Arts (RPA) has announced a partnership with specialist tuition service Hunt Scholars to create alternative provision for children with varied needs.

The two organisations will work together to support young people with non-traditional educational needs or those who may have found that school is not for them.

Revolution@HuntScholars will run initially from North Swindon, accepting referrals from local schools and support organisations and working with home-educating families, who are invited to make contact directly.

“We plan to offer a bespoke package to children who for many reasons have been unable to flourish in the school system,” said RPA’s founder Fi Da Silva-Adams.

“Academic education works best when a person feels part of a community of shared values, feels their skills and contributions are important and that their experiences are validated. We wanted to create a safe space with the right environment for resilience to develop and self-esteem to grow.”

Sessions will be tailored to help young people integrate into the wider community, as well as to reinforce skills across the curriculum, “linking them back to education in a way which feels relevant and attainable for them”, she added.

Ellie Hunt, a qualified teacher who runs Hunt Scholars, described RPA’s work as “naturally exuberant and joyful”.

“It is a place where children feel accepted, not ‘othered’, so that they can have the confidence to be themselves,” she said.

Other local providers primarily use sport to support young people with differing needs, she said, “so the time is right for an art-based package”. 

“We will use drama to develop emotional literacy such as understanding what body language may look like. Dance can help children who need movement breaks because they can’t sit still for long. By trying circus skills a child might master balancing a peacock feather on their finger and take that confidence forward into a maths lesson.”  

Mercury Theatre Colchester is extending three dedicated talent development programmes for promising and innovative playwrights, producers and directors from the east of England.

The programmes enable creatives to work with leading theatremakers and gain experience working in the industry.

Each programme is designed to nurture future talent. Evaluation statistics from the previous cohort show that programme beneficiaries have enhanced employability of up to 60%.

The Mercury Playwright Programme will mentor a group of writers through the process of creating a full-length play or piece of theatre, under the guidance of stage and screenwriter Kenny Emson.

The Mercury Directors Programme will support mentees through the through page-to-stage directing process under the guidance of Mercury’s Creative Director Ryan McBryde.

And the Mercury Producers Programme will provide an overview of the skills and craft of theatre producing, including setting up companies, pitching, planning, budgeting, fundraising, audiences, marketing, touring and press, led by Dilek Latif, Mercury’s producer.

“The success of our [Playwrights, Producers, Directors] PPD scheme has proved to us how vital it is that regional theatres support local artists and so we’re extending and reaching out for the applications from playwrights, producers and directors at any stage of their career who have a strong link to Colchester and or the wider Eastern region having originated, studied or lived here,” said McBryde.

“This year, our PPD offer will be enriched by unlocking additional expert knowledge from guest session leaders from our new Associate Companies: Graeae, English Touring Theatre, Paines Plough and Frantic Assembly,” he added. 

“Partnering with these extraordinary, world-renowned theatre companies will allow us to broaden the scope of our work and provide further opportunities to springboard artists across our region.”

The nine-month-long programmes are set to run from July 2023 to March 2024.

Antony Stuart-Hicks, Talent Development Producer for the Mercury, said the theatre is looking for “creatives who are bold, ambitious and theatrically daring”,  particularly those underrepresented in the industry, “whether this be by class, disability, ethnicity, gender or sexuality”.