Raising Films formed in response to the staggering statistics around women in the film industry. We started with a conversation about the impact of parenting for women – but we learned it's about so much more. It's about everyone who is a carer: when we surveyed our community for Making It Possible, 79% of people said caring had a negative impact on their career in the UK film and television industry. When we looked deeper with our Raising Our Game report, we discovered that the question of workplace discrimination is endemic – looking at the challenges and exclusions facing carers of all kinds opened our eyes to the bigger picture.
In the last few months, we've seen workplace discrimination and harassment in the film industry receive unprecedented attention. Conversations about this have never been more alive than they are right now. And thanks to our community and our research, we have the solutions: we've offered training, mentoring, network-building and access to support funds. We have consulted within the industry and commissioned research, resulting in practical checklists. You can download them for free. They offer advice on and solutions to discrimination in the workplace, report. Please use them!
Raising Films is a Community Interest Company: a volunteer-led organisation and most of the founding team are parent-filmmakers themselves. So far, we've been successful in raising funds from national bodies on a project-by-project basis, but there is no core financial support available to sustain an organisation such as ours.
We've identified a specific and under-recognised issue around inclusion and discrimination, and we want to continue to represent our community and challenge these barriers, because the industry is not moving fast enough to dismantle them. To think bigger, we need paid staff.
We want to model the good practice we want to see in the industry by offering fairly-paid, flexible positions. This will allow us to continue the successful programmes we are already delivering, and to develop new opportunities to campaign and to grow our community.
We know our solutions are working – we just need to keep going!
If we’re going to keep going, we need to raise £50,000 – the organisational running cost for 2 years. We have secured £36k funding from industry partners and donors so far – but we need your help to reach our goal. All of the money will go directly into creating fairly-paid, part-time positions that uphold our values.
It will pay for (approx. figures):
- a part time Project Manager to keep us moving, keep us organised, deliver our vision, and ensure we can remain in the big conversations (£10k a year)
- a part time Web Editor and PR Officer who will build our web, social and media presence, keeping the story alive, sharing good practice and great ideas, so that anyone who needs us knows about us (£6k a year)
- and a part time Community Manager, who will keep listening to what our community needs, and working on how best to deliver it by developing and sustaining on- and offline communities around the country (£3k a year)
- We also need to fund a Training & Development and Research Manager for a few days each year to help develop ideas and funding bids for future projects with partner organisations (£3k a year)
- Finally we need to pay for the small things that drive any organisation – website hosting and development, IT support, accountancy, insurance etc – boring but absolutely necessary core costs (£3k a year)
This will allow us to continue to build our community and our engagement with industry influencers who can make change, secure funding for our popular training programmes Making It Possible and Closr which over 100 participants have already benefited from. We will also be able to continue to manage and make people aware of the Family Support Fund with the CTBF, awarding emergency funds to filmmakers who need assistance with getting back to work after a caring break.
We will be able to continue to consult with and advise industry organisations around the issues of caregiving and filmmaking, in our fight for a new set of standards. We will be able to continue to deliver original content on our website, in the form of video conversations, interviews, blog posts and testimonials from parent and carer filmmakers all over the world. Our website, newsletter and members' area will keep our community in touch, through our online discussion boards and meet-up events. And with your support, we will continue to campaign and petition for better working conditions across the sector hand in hand with other sister organisations and unions.
Even more excitingly, it will allow us to focus on developing and funding new initiatives that we know are much needed:
- a family-friendly residential opportunity
- consulting on a legally binding code-of-conduct around working conditions
- establishing new chapters of Raising Films internationally.
In the spirit of seeing the work you do benefit all, we are offering a shared reward system. Whenever our fund hits a target, we will publish an exclusive video message from a special filmmaker guest. Stay tuned for wonderful words of wisdom from some of the most exciting and brilliant talent out there.
For the final night of our campaign on Friday 9th March we will be hosting a party at BAFTA for all our friends, supporters and some special guests. Complimentary room hire of 195 Piccadilly has been provided courtesy of BAFTA’s Gift of the Academy scheme.
We’d love you to come along and celebrate with us. Tickets are £25 a head and are available here. Hope to see you there!
There will be a raffle featuring prizes from Cuckooz Nest, the BFI, The Soho House Group, Rachel Jackson London, children’s brands including Nuby, Skip Hop, Grobag and Trunki, This Mama Does, DVDs from Film4, Peccadillo and a whole pile of children's books from award winning authors. Plus some more adult prizes too!
The evening will be hosted by Alice Lowe.
We're nothing without you! We're a community of freelancers, self-employed and part-time workers, and that's why we're fighting for better working conditions and for funded childcare. We know it's not always possible to donate, but if you can #RaiseYourVoice in support of #RaisingRaisingFilms, that helps enormously! And every fiver is massively appreciated – gummy grins all round :)