Where does a studio start when approaching a D&I initiative?
One of the first things we did was to set up employee resource groups – an LGBTQ+ group, and Women at Splash Damage. Later we set up BAME at Splash Damage and recently we set up the Families group. These groups are open to everyone – whether you are part of a marginalised group or an ally – and it was a good place to get the conversation started, looking at the issues and what things we could do to fix them.
The next thing we looked at was unconscious bias and how to fix that. Thankfully, there’s a lot of free resources out there in terms of webinars and workshops. Discussing unconscious bias was a great way to start talking about how marginalised people are affected without making it accusatory or telling people that they are thinking things wrongly or doing things wrong, but rather that it’s what society and psychology has set us up to do and think.