Reframing Disability

Since 2019, Media Trust has partnered with the BBC’s 50:50 The Equality Project on various initiatives to tackle the under-representation of disability in the media, both on screen and behind the camera – from media training for disabled News & Current Affairs experts to accessible production training for BBC content-makers.

Last year, we took Reframing Disability further and launched the Media Trust & ScreenSkills Reframing Disability Mentoring Programme, in partnership with 50:50. This industry-first, disability-led mentoring programme aims to help disabled behind-the-camera talent progress in their careers using National Lottery funds awarded by the BFI as part of the Future Film Skills programme. For our first cohort, we paired 23 deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent mentees, from early to mid-career stages across the screen industries, with disabled mentors from the BBC.

Over their six-month long mentoring journey, our mentors and mentees have benefitted from fully accessible induction training and access to some brilliant expertise, including a ‘Discovering Your Brand’ session with Samantha Renke and an ‘Art of the Pitch’ workshop.

Our aim is to establish, alongside the BBC’s existing disability networks and schemes such as BBC Ability and Elevate, a unique network of disabled creatives supporting one another via mentorship and the sharing of resources and opportunities, to drive greater disabled representation going forward.

The Reframing Disability Training for content-makers has been hugely popular at the BBC since we rolled it out in April 2021, following a series of successful pilots. The aim is to ensure that the way we cover disability and feature disabled contributors in our content is authentic and inclusive, and to ensure that our production practices themselves are accessible.

We’ve now trained over 130 BBC and indie producers, with regular waitlists for upcoming sessions. And the feedback has been hugely motivating. One learner described the best part of the training as “reflecting on the many aspects of disability, to see why it matters to everybody… it can only be good for our journalism and lead to more inclusive and wider reaching coverage.” 

It’s exciting that Reframing Disability has now been added to the BBC’s internal Academy to become a formal part of staff training and development. We’ve also expanded our team of trainers to include 10 colleagues who all identify as having a disability, impairment, learning difference or long-term condition. And, as we move away from working virtually to in-person sessions, we have plans to take Reframing Disability out across the UK in a 2022 Roadshow.

The success of this training lies in having open and honest discussions in a safe space. The more comfortable we are in opening ourselves up to learning and asking difficult questions, the more confident we will be to better reflect and represent people with disabilities in our storytelling.