This project took place on the ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
As settlers, we recognize that this land was stolen and is occupied through various and evolving forms of colonial violence — of which we are often the beneficiaries. These truths beget our responsibility to work in service of artists of the host nations, create culturally safe spaces for Indigenous creatives to thrive, and be accomplices in the Land Back and Idle No More movements. The Indigenous Screen Office offers a wealth of tools and resources for working with Indigenous peoples, stories and communities, including the essential Pathways and Protocols: A Media Production Guide for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Communities, Cultures, Concepts and Stories.
Introduction
By Kristin Cheung & Megan Lau
This report started in March 2019 with a conversation between April Thompson, the Executive Director of Cineworks, and Kristin. A meeting over the phone led to another conversation over coffee and doughnuts, which to led us applying for a Vancouver Foundation Develop grant in September that year, which we were awarded. This grant enabled us to start an important dialogue and connect women of colour in the film and television industry with each other.
But the roots of this project stretch back to 2016, when we co-founded The Future is You and Me together. “The Future,” as we like to call it — is a project based in Vancouver that uplifts, trains, and connects young women of colour in the arts.
Our paths first crossed in the Vancouver arts community — and more specifically, in the world of literary magazine publishing. Megan is Chinese and Kristin is Lao-Chinese. Aside from separate experiences at a Asian Canadian literary magazine, we rarely worked with other racialized people in media.
In 2016, after having achieved some level of stability and recognition in the Canadian arts and culture sector, we decided to create a mentorship program for women of colour, 18 - 25 years old, to share the wisdom that we had gained in our careers thus far, and to develop the support system we wish we had when we were starting out.
Each cohort welcomed 8-12 participants and up to 15 speakers from various artistic disciplines — all women of colour. Our workshops have always been small and purposely so. Small intimate gatherings were a reflection of ourselves, in how we like to engage and connect, especially with our closest friends.
Although the workshops were an important step in our personal journey in integrating intersectional feminism in our practice, Kristin had always been curious to see what more we could do with the connections we’ve made. In 2018, Kristin completed a Masters in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy, and when she returned to Vancouver, she wanted to expand on her community research experience. After three years of running workshops under The Future banner, she became interested in learning more about how we could increase the impact of our work through research. From that impulse, this collaboration with Cineworks was formed.
We invited Tanvi Bhatia, an alumna of The Future, whose experience includes screenwriting, facilitation, community organizing, and research, to lead the engagement and research, and define the narrative of this report. Tanvi shared our interest in advocating for a more inclusive and equitable arts and culture sector. As our Research Lead, Tanvi led three in-person focus groups at Cineworks’ facility in Downtown Vancouver in February and March 2020 and conducted three one-on-one interviews.
Intentionally, this report is unlike many other EDI (Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) reports that lean heavily on quantitative data. The heart of this report is the qualitative data that came out of the focus groups and interviews. They were honest conversations that were able to happen among peers, friends, and colleagues in a shared space — a luxury in today’s reality.
We hoped not only to name the barriers to opportunities and power for women and non-binary people of colour in the industry, but to bring to life the felt experiences of working within those barriers.
Publishing this report has been a long and slow journey. We developed this report on top of our personal, work, and school obligations, which were indelibly transformed by the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The film and television industry, too, has been impacted by the pandemic and a global reckoning with systemic racism. The impacts of these forces on racialized women and non-binary people in the industry is an open question.
This report is for our community. We hope the information shared here will change the perspectives of stakeholders, industry professionals, and gatekeepers, particularly those who are interested in creating a more equitable industry. But our greater hope is that women and non-binary people of colour in film and television see themselves reflected in the struggles and achievements shared in this report.