Over the past eight weeks and for the third year running, we’ve been supporting the UAL Women of Colour+ Leadership Programme (W+CinL) which is designed to help students from underrepresented backgrounds on their creative journeys.
The programme aims to do a number of things including to Identify and address the barriers that women (inclusive of non-binary, agender and assigned female at birth) face accessing leadership positions in the creative and cultural industries.
It also aimed to empower UAL students and graduates who identify as women of colour to aspire for future leadership positions by addressing the double barrier of the gender glass ceiling and racial discrimination which recognises intersectional disadvantage.
Finally it aims to create a mutually supportive network of stakeholders who identify as women of colour and allies of different identities.
Each year, students at UAL undertaking degrees in creative industries fields respond to a client brief and form teams to respond to the brief.
This year’s W+CinL brief was set by Hope&Glory client The Body Coach, and was focused around getting more of the student population active and engaging with the app. From the briefing process in week 2 to the final presentations delivered by the students in week 8, H&G provided guidance and support along the way to help the students to tackle a real life PR brief.
Our role also saw us presenting the anatomy of a campaign with a client case study to show how a campaign is constructed, and how you respond to a brief. From gathering insights and research, to coming up with a creative idea and developing a strategy and executional plan, along with success metrics, timings and budgets – exactly what we do day in and day out at Hope&Glory.
Sixteen students took part this year studying a range of different creative disciplines, from photography to journalism, advertising to graphic design.
The final presentations were considered, impactful and downright inspiring – we were all blown away!
Programmes such as these are so important for exposing PR to people from underrepresented backgrounds and ultimately help increase representation in an industry where currently only 3% of PR practitioners are Black, 4% Mixed ethnicity and 5% Asian (vs 87% White). There’s a lot more work to be done but we hope it’s a step in the right direction.
And it’s is an important part of our commitment to broadening representation across a range of characteristics, be that race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, socio-economic background or disability.
