If you've been paying attention to recent trends, you may have noticed production companies placing an emphasis on shoehorning diversity into TV and film to better appeal to movie-going audiences, with the most frequent movie-goers tending to be LatinX, Black, and Asian audiences. When these attempts to diversify media are primarily driven by profits and not through a genuine desire to be inclusive, audiences and cast can usually see right through these disingenuous efforts.

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This got me thinking: How can companies that traditionally aren't great at introducing diversity and inclusivity organically create diverse and inclusive media? After all, if these companies genuinely want to turn over a new leaf, diverse consumers like me should at least offer some possible resources to help them do so, right?

7 Best Practices For Organically Creating Diverse and Inclusive Media

According to a recent ViacomCBS study, 79% of global viewers say that more diversity is needed on screen, with 52% pushing for more accurate onscreen portrayals. With these statistics, it's more important than ever for production companies to meet this demand, and organically create diverse and inclusive media. Here are the ways to organically create media that better reflects the world we live in.

1. Seek out and hire diverse screenwriters

You may have heard the adage: "Diversity begins on the page." While this may feel like a quaint aphorism, there is quite a bit of truth behind it. In most people's everyday lives, their social circles comprise of people with similar cultural backgrounds.

This applies to screenwriters, too. If you want to tell diverse and inclusive stories, it begins with seeking out and hiring diverse screenwriters, who can draw on the people they know and the experiences they've had. It's important to not tokenize their experiences, and hire more than one screenwriter fro the community because it's a lot of pressure to ask a person to represent their entire community through their sole perspective. By keeping with screenwriters who don't come from communities made marginalized, you're limiting yourself to these writers' social circles and experiences, which may not be as diverse or inclusive as you'd like.

2. Seek out and hire diverse cast and crew

Similar to seeking out and hiring screenwriters, it's easier to foster an inclusive production environment if you take the extra effort to find a diverse cast and crew to tell the film's story. Besides the writer, producers, directors, and editors also contribute creatively to a film, and so staffing those roles diversely helps keep the storytelling nuanced and guards against the use of stereotypes. To bring on a diverse crew, look for special interest organizations or groups that can help connect you to professionals from these communities.

While some may interpret casting diversely as deprioritizing merit in favor of filling some kind of quota, being conscious about actors' backgrounds means that you're opening your production up to even more perspectives that could help you tell the best and most authentic story. Additionally, if an actor whom you wouldn't traditionally consider casting is brought to your attention, give them the chance to audition anyways. You'll be surprised the talent that has been overlooked by the industry.

3. Do your research, and if that fails, consider hiring cultural advisors

If your production is tackling subject matter that is outside of your cultural scope, consider educating yourself before working on your production. With the proliferation of the internet, there are so many more resources out there that you could use to help bridge the knowledge gap, so you can competently tell the story.

However, if you feel your research isn't going far enough, consider engaging the services of cultural advisors. In the industry, Disney and Marvel are notable for this, with Disney hiring an Oceanic Trust to help tell an authentically Polynesian "Moana." Similar to how Marvel hires group of science advisors to help ground the fantastical events in the MCU, enlist community leaders to help you tell your film's story. Hiring these specialists helps maintain your project's authenticity, and further involves the communities that the stories come from.

4. Maintain a humble curiosity about the world

As a creator, one essential part of making more diverse stories is to maintain a humble curiosity about the world by keeping abreast of global news and cultivating an interest in learning about other cultures. Maybe that means exposing yourself to media from other countries or media that deals with topics you don't normally come upon.

This openness to the world is important because broadening your influences increases the chances of these influences bleeding through into your work. Not only will this make your work feel more refreshing, but it also will expand the inclusivity in your work by incorporating views from other sources.

5. Credit and celebrate your cultural influences

While being a creator means that you're often taking from a variety of influences, you should also be aware of and credit your cultural influences. By doing so, you guard against accusations of cultural appropriation and also acknowledge the communities that have been made marginalized.

This recognition can be huge - you can use your platform to point out important issues plaguing those communities. In doing so, celebrating your cultural influences signals to others that the communities you're talking about and the stories they have are important. Your actions reveal to these communities that you genuinely respect them and want to do their stories justice.

6. Expand your network and work with new collaborators whenever possible

When you work in film, it's easy to fall back onto nepotism, and hire people that you know you work well with. While this practice lessens the risk of unpleasant collaborations, in practice, it limits your ability to make diverse and inclusive films. To tell stories that range in topic, you need to collaborators who truly understand the vision you're trying to convey. Often, the best way to find the most suitable collaborators for each story is to work with new people each time.

To find these new collaborators, you'll have to expand your network constantly. Once you have a greater understanding of the filmmaking landscape and know who you can contact if you need to tell a specific story, creating diverse and inclusive media can be an effortless endeavor since you have the right minds for the job.

7. Support good efforts in diverse and inclusive media when they occur

Finally, if you want more authentic diverse and inclusive media, you need to support it when you see it. This means dragging yourself to the theater and paying for a movie ticket, if you see a film that is telling a story that resonates with you and your community.

At the end of the day, studios listen to audience dollars. If your community shows that they're willing to turn out for a good-faith effort by the production companies, then they will feel more encouraged to pursue other stories about your community in the future because they are commercially viable. This support also extends to notable creators in your community - support their efforts and help them build an audience hungry for more of their content. Show production companies that there is a demand for their ideas, and these creators will be empowered when finding backers to help get those ideas to the screen.

In actuality, creating diverse and inclusive media isn't that hard. By being aware of every step in the production process where inclusivity could falter, production companies can back up their lofty ideals through concrete action. I hope that these7 best practices can help these companies catch when they're accidentally excluding diverse voices from the creative process. After all, it's about time that studios listened to 70% of global audiences.

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