CIISA Annual Report 2024-2025 - Flipbook - Page 23
After a few months of
conversations, an impressive
roster of experienced, authoritative
and engaged executives and
industry experts from across
the creative sector assembled,
ready to put in the hard yards
required to come up with the CIISA
Standards.
Sitting at the very heart of CIISA,
the Standards framework sets
out the minimum standards of
behaviour expected across the
creative industries to ensure
safe and inclusive working
environments.
Akeju set about planning and
staging the Standards Advisory
Committee meetings with the first
held in July 2024. “We had the
second one in September, another
in October, and then fourth
post consultation in February
2025,” Akeju explains. She also
held a series of workshops in
October 2024 with organisations
representing freelancers to check
the relevance and relatability of
the Standards before launching
the wider industry consultation.
“Everyone who joined the
committee showed up at all the
meetings,” she says. “It was a very
impressive turnout every time and
signalled the industry appetite to
come on board.
“We also had a fantastic
responseto the industry
consultation with over 700
individual engagements, and
almost 200 substantive responses
from across film, television,
music and theatre, from lighting
designers to costume designers,
Members of the Standards Advisory
Committee:
CIISA (Chair)
ITV
The Association of British
Orchestras
The Musicians’ Union
Attitude is Everything
Pact
BAFTA
National Theatre
BBC
The Production Guild of Great
Britain
Bectu
Royal Exchange Theatre
Black Lives in Music
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Film and TV Charity
Sony Music
Freelancers Make Theatre Work
TV Industry Human Rights Forum
Help Musicians
Warner Bros. Discovery
from composers to opera singers
and from puppeteers to producers.
Over half were self-employed. It
was affirming to see that – even
before we made changes based
on the consultation feedback
– 80% of respondents felt the
expectations in the Standards
were clear and 76% could see how
the CIISA Standards were relevant
to them and their experience
working in the creative industries.”
“In theatre specifically, given
the project-based nature of
productions where creative
teams form temporarily across
different venues and companies,
it is important that CIISA has
recognised that the distinctive
working patterns and diversity of
the sector’s workforce will benefit
from specific approaches within
the unified framework,” Standard
Advisory Committee member
Sandeep Mahal, Deputy Executive
Director of the Royal Shakespeare
Company says. “We’re making sure
theatre’s voice is central to this
work. This represents an exciting
opportunity to build on the
excellent work already happening
across individual organisations.”
CIISA’s Standards represent
a fundamental shift from
fragmented approaches to unified
accountability.
“As well as the work around
creating conditions for inclusion
and safety, we see enormous
value in accessing industry-wide
data systems that will enable
organisations to benchmark
their workplace culture against
sector-wide trends, identify
emerging patterns of concern,
and measure the effectiveness
of interventions,” Mahal explains.
“This industry-wide data approach
will enable organisations like ours
to move beyond isolated incident
management to understanding
systemic issues, support evidencebased decision making and
demonstrate tangible progress to
stakeholders.”
CIISA ANNUAL REPORT 2024/25
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