Family Matters (Inclusivity Now - CMC 2024)
Recent ONS statistics on ‘Families and households in the UK: 2022′ reveal a significant change in the diversity of family backgrounds and makeups over the last 10 years. Why then does very little of this diversity get translated onto the screen, into books or games?
In this video for the CMC Inclusivity Now series, Director Nandita Jain investigates what’s needed and why we are not yet achieving it.
Children need shows that demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of real lives. Different families, with different skin colours, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientation, religions, economic circumstances and physical abilities. While there have been efforts to widen representation, and this has moved from background to foreground characters, the normalisation of the various different kinds of family setups still has some way to go. When the portrayal of a wide range of underrepresented families becomes non-noteworthy – we’ll know we are achieving something. This video explores how a range of industry practitioners have achieved success in inclusive portrayal and asks what and how much more can be done.
