Web series BlackStage UK created to highlight racism in the entertainment industry

Actor Gabrielle Brooks has created a new web series BlackStage UK, which focuses on issues affecting the Black community within the entertainment industry.

Supported by Arts Council England and Inc Arts , the series begins with an episode titled Microagressions and Assumptions. Topics covered include allyship and the use of abbreviations such as BAME. The series features 30 workers from around the UK in varying sectors of the arts and entertainment industries, including actors Omari Douglas, Arun Blair-Mangat and Cherelle Skeete, voice coach Hazel Holder and stage manager Constance Oak. 

Interviews took place in summer 2020 during the first UK lockdown and at the height of the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. The interviews will offer insight into their experiences of the industry, and also explores solutions for continued positive change moving forward, as many organisations and individuals have already pledged to do. It is hoped that the series will provide a starting point for anti-racism work, and prove a useful tool for those who have made public pledges to tackle systemic racism in the industry.

Of the need for the project, Brooks said: “I created BlackStage UK out of necessity. This pandemic has exacerbated the systematic inequalities experienced by black people in the arts and beyond. While institutions have made pledges towards change, they are still leaving a key element out of the conversation: us, the Black community.

“This is where BlackStage UK comes in. This series creates a safe space for the harsh realities of the racism that exists in our industry and country to be exposed. This community that has been largely silenced is finally and rightly being amplified.”

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