Channel 4 has enlisted Bristol-based TV talent company Gritty Talent to help indies meet its tightened diversity commissioning guidelines.
Gritty Talent connects emerging and diverse content with broadcasters, production heads and casting teams.
C4 has asked it to identify nationwide skills gaps and talent shortages across all genres, to establish a database of underrepresented talent that can be accessed by producers.
Working with C4’s training arm 4Skills, Gritty Talent will initially look at news and current affairs, factual entertainment and documentaries before moving on to other genres.
Drawn up in the wake of its Black to Front project, C4’s revised commissioning guidelines come into force on 1 August and require productions to have at least one ethnically diverse senior leader.
The broadcaster’s director of commissioning operations Emma Hardy said the partnership will help deliver its ambition to “challenge dated recruitment practices across our shows and put a robust framework in place to improve how ethnically diverse and other under-represented talent is identified, supported and connected to productions”.
Gritty Talent was set up by Mel Rodrigues, who helped draw up C4’s guidelines in a six-month stint as the broadcaster’s creative diversity lead.
She has also worked on the Black to Front initiative and C4’s diverse indies fund.
Other TV companies to have worked with Gritty Talent include the BBC and ScreenSkills, plus indies such as Full Fat TV, Outline, Five Mile Films and Off the Fence.
To see C4's revised commissioning guidelines in full, click here
