News

D&D Meeting Nov 20th – Unconscious Bias Session

By Catherine Considine

Dear D&D Members,
For our last D&D meeting of the year – and following on from interest in the 50:50 speakers who attended earlier this year – we have invited BIFA (British Independent Film Awards) to deliver a session exploring “unconscious bias”.

BIFA has developed an approach with Challenge, specifically aimed at the media industry – and has delivered these sessions with a number of agencies and with all BIFA panelists. Here are some comments from people who have participated in the training so far;

o “It was really eye-opening. Some things were perhaps obvious, but when discussed in this context I felt they really hit home”
o “I went into the training seeing it as a tick-box exercise but was pleasantly surprised to find out how genuinely useful it was …”
o “Brilliant – the presenter was fantastic, relatable,
accessible. She made it feel like a conversation rather than a lecture. This session helped push a huge group of industry professionals a step in the right direction. Please continue to make a part of BIFA. As a returning voter, I think you should even have a dedicated session for returners to re-up their training, which should be required every year if you want to vote.”
o “Really excellent – I’ve recommended it to several film organisations since and at least one is going ahead with it. It was a brilliant move to do it – both impressive and pragmatic.”

This session will take the place of our usual D&D meeting on November 20th and with time for a Q&A afterwards is likely to run from 1pm – 2.30pm.

I hope this will be of interest.

All best,
C