INDUSTRY FIRESIDE CHAT
LAURA MANSFIELD INTERVIEW NICOLA FOLEY FIRESIDE CHAT
With a career that spans producer, company founder, creative director and CEO of ScreenSkills, Laura Mansfield brings a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing the UK screen industries. As the sector navigates disruption, she’s championing the skills and diversity needed to secure its future
DEFINITION: From your vantage point, how healthy are the UK
workforce. Supporting more consistent and sustainable growth in the sector is the real goal. That will enable people to build long-term careers – and support indigenous companies right across the UK too. DEF: You’ve worn many hats in your career. Looking back, which moments or shifts stand out most? LM: The theme of it all is continual change. We are an industry that is underpinned by three consistent elements – people, ideas and technology. And we’re also an industry that’s really good at leading through technology and change. Personally, and I’m showing my age, the moments that stand out to me were
as a twentysomething indie founder in my first ever office admiring our blue bubble back iMac computers, which we thought were the most high-tech things ever. They’re now in the Design Museum! I will always remember Richard Watsham, now an inspiring industry leader, showing me and my co-founder Helen Veale what you could do with this cool new search engine he thought we should know about, Google! I also have vivid memories of seeing Twitter and YouTube for the first time, and feeling that things would shift forever. We’re now in this space again with the exponential speed generative AI is moving at. How we as an industry balance embracing the potential it offers, while protecting our artists, creators and IP generators, will define us as an industry for a generation.
screen industries right now?
LAURA MANSFIELD: It’s a time of change and challenge
but also opportunity. It’s fantastic that the government has recognised the importance of the creative and screen industries in the Sector Plan and the Industrial Strategy, however there are very real challenges posed by factors impacting the screen industries at the same time. Changing viewing habits, a fast-changing advertising market and acceleration of AI, which is moving faster than regulation or policies can manage, are all examples. This can have an impact on the resilience of the workforce who are mostly freelance. They have already weathered some very bruising changes: from the Covid-19 shutdown to the sudden upswing in work – people were promoted into positions they might not have been ready for – and the ripple effect of the writers’ strike where work suddenly stopped for many of them. Our recent Sizing Up report, published in partnership with 4Skills, showed that 65% of freelancers have found it hard to find work in the past year and there is a growing degree of underutilisation of the
HOW WE BALANCE embracing AI WHILE protecting our creators WILL DEFINE US”
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