UK broadcasters back unscripted fund
A group of UK broadcasters, including the BBC and Channel 4, have unveiled a fund aimed at covering crew shortages and skill gaps and diversifying production crew and talent in unscripted TV.
Seetha Kumar
The Beeb and C4 are founding investors in the Unscripted TV Skills Fund along with A+E Networks UK, Sky and Discovery UK.
The fund has been announced in partnership with non-profit organisation ScreenSkills and UK indie producers association Pact. Launched on June 1, it will see training investment in unscripted TV rise from £370,000 (US$510,000) to £3m a year.
The scheme unites and replaces the ScreenSkills TV Skills Fund, which accepted broadcaster donations, and the Indie Training Fund, which took independent contributions.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for BAFTA LA
The Film and TV Charity has also launched a new suite of anti-bullying support services for industry workers.
The British Film Institute and BAFTA have announced the next stage of their work to tackle, harassment and racism in the workplace, deploying a new employer Action List for the film and TV sectors to use that comes with widespread support from across the industry. At the same, The Film and TV Charity has launched a new suite of anti-bullying support services for workers.
The new initiatives come just over a year after research commissioned by the charity revealed some alarming statistics, among them that some 84 percent of workers from data collected from 9,000 individuals had experienced or witnessed bullying or harassment. It added that those who had experienced bullying were twice as likely to want to leave the industry and highly likely to have had mental health problems.
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