The Creative Scotland Gala Awards Ceremony will be held on Thursday 13th December 2012, at Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow, from 6.30pm til late. (Dress: Black Tie) Sponsored by The Daily Record, Creative Scotland, Event Scotland, YoungScot, and Education Scotland.
Creative Scotland puts equality at the heart of its activity, and we aim to acknowledge and reflect the diversity in Scotland today in all our work … Providing leadership through best practice in our own organisation.
The Judging Panel for the Creative Scotland Awards 2012:
- Allan Rennie – Editor, The Daily Record
- Iain Munro – Director of Creative Development, Creative Scotland
- Paul English – Arts & Entertainment Writer, The Daily Record
- Andrew Lockyer – BBC, Executive Producer of The Culture Show and The Review Show
- Sanjeev Kohli – Writer, actor, comedian
- Tom Pow – Poet
- Aaron Shorr – Royal Conservatoire Scotland
All men. Nobody responsible for putting together the panel of judges evidently thought it matters if Creative Scotland’s awards “acknowledge and reflect the diversity in Scotland today” in the most simple and basic of ways: by having a panel of judges that included representatives from half the population.
Acknowledging that it was pretty much inevitable that Allan Rennie and Iain Munro must be asked to be judges, since sponsorship has its due rewards, that leaves five places: for an evenly balanced panel, three or four of those places should have gone to women.
The general areas that appear wanted were a newspaper’s arts and entertainment writer, a TV producer, two creative Scots (writer, poet, actor, comedian), and a representative from further education in music, dance, or drama.
Specific issues about finding a senior TV producer who isn’t male are discussed here.
But no organisation in a modern Scotland should think it acceptable to come up with a panel that’s all male.
Creative Scotland’s response on Twitter was A broad range of arts & culture professionals were invited to form part of the judging panel. Female judges were selected but were unable to take part.
This is an initial list that it would be great to expand on. Tagged #CreativeScotsWomen on Twitter, or add as a comment here. (The Women’s Room UK is doing a similar and much more broadly-scoped project to list women experts for the BBC and other media.)
If Creative Scotland asked even half of the women on this list and they were all unable to take part on that Thursday evening, I want to know what party they’re all invited to, because that would be the best evening out ever.
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