Black, Indigenous & Women of Colour in Metro Vancouver’s Film and TV Industry Speak
A Community Research Project by The Future is You and Me & Cineworks
BIWOCinFilm.com
In 2020, we partnered with Cineworks to lead a community research project examining the barriers in the independent film and television sector in Metro Vancouver for people who are marginalized for their race and gender. In this report, we call them BIWOC: Black women, Indigenous women, and women of colour—this includes women and non-binary people.
Our research lead and Future alum, Tanvi Bhatia, hosted three focus groups where we asked community members, What support do BIWOC need to advance their creative and professional endeavours in the sector? Tanvi also conducted additional one-on-one interviews for more in-depth conversations. We hoped not only to name the barriers to opportunities and power for women and non-binary people of colour in the industry, but to bring to life the felt experiences of working within those barriers.
Lockdown and various flavours of burnout have been obstacles to completing this project, but we are thrilled to publish our findings in A Seat at the Table: Black, Indigenous & Women of Colour in Metro Vancouver’s Film and TV Industry Speak. It’s been a long time coming.
This report started in March 2019 with a conversation between April Thompson, the Executive Director of Cineworks, and Kristin. A meeting over the phone led to another conversation over coffee and doughnuts, which to led us applying for a Vancouver Foundation Develop grant in September that year, which we were awarded.
This report is unlike many other Equity, Diversity & Inclusion reports that lean heavily on quantitative data. The heart of this report is the qualitative data that came out of the focus groups and interviews. They were honest conversations that were able to happen among peers, friends, and colleagues in a shared space — a luxury in today’s reality.
We hope A Seat at the Table will change the perspectives of stakeholders, industry professionals, and gatekeepers, particularly those who are interested in creating a more equitable industry. Most of all, we hope women and non-binary people of colour in film and television see themselves reflected in the struggles and achievements shared in this report.
We would love your responses and questions. You can reach us at info@thefutureisyouandme.com.