Diversity and data: an ontology of race and ethnicity in the British Film Institute’s Diversity Standards

Abstract

This article addresses the role of data in the analysis of racial diversity in the UK film industry. Due to the prolonged poor representation of racial difference, academic researchers increasingly identify the UK film sector as a particular site of multi-dimensional structural inequalities. This article will assess the impact of data-led interventions made by the UK film industry to increase the presence of BAME individuals within the sector. It will do this through an analysis of the policy approach of the UK’s lead body for film, the British Film Institute, examining how one major policy initiative, the BFI’s Diversity Standards launched in 2016 as an industry intervention into prevailing sector inequalities, has sought to achieve racial diversity and inclusion across its Film Fund-supported film productions between 2016 and 2019. Analysing cross-sectional data from 235 films which is aggregated across differing film genres, budgets and regions, the study assesses how the outcomes of the Diversity Standards have offered a representation of racial diversity across these production areas.