Our COP26 events
Diversity Critical Perspectives: Researching Racial Inequality in the UK Film Industry
Diversity Critical Perspectives: Researching Racial Inequality in the UK Film Industry
Centre for Cultural Policy Research
Date: Monday 10 October 2022
Time: 15:00 - 17:30
Venue: Boyd Orr Building, room 507
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Dr Clive Nwonka
Website: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/researching-racial-inequality-in-the-uk-film-industry-tickets-420468631997
Using a unique dataset, major new research in collaboration with the British Film Institute is exploring the relationship between racial inequality, diversity and cultural policy in the UK film sector by researching through both quantitative and qualitative modes how factors such as regionality, genre have challenged how we must interpret data-led approaches to the study of racial and ethnic difference within the sector and the role of testimony in understanding the nature of discriminatory institutional cultures and practices.
Arguing for a social policy approach to how we understand racial inequalities in the UK film sector and its connected industries, this seminar allows for an exploration of how a mixed methodological approach drawing from film studies, cultural studies, media and communications as well as CRT frames are crucial to a critical understanding of the multi-dimensional forms of racial inequality in the UK film industries. The seminar will also consider the historical significance of the academic study of Black and minority ethnic film culture as a site of racial struggle and contestation, the political discourses the language and practice of ‘cultural diversity’ and ‘structural racism’ have and continue to be embedded in, and the various ways in which current critical race research seeks to decouple ‘diversity work’ from anti-racism and the implications of such a critical shift not just in informing inclusion policy strategies, but in the position and value of the study of race within UK film, TV and media scholarship.
Dr Clive Nwonka is Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society at UCL. Nwonka is the co-editor of the book Black Film/British Cinema II and is the author of the forthcoming book Black Boys: The Aesthetics of British Urban Film. Nwonka is the Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project The Colour of Diversity: A Longitudinal Analysis of the BFI Diversity Standards Data and Racial Inequality in the UK Film Industry (2021-2024), a major study of race and racism in the UK film sector and the efficacy of cultural diversity policy.