MENTAL HEALTH
“The freelance nature within the industry creates a fear around speaking. We want to create environments where people feel confident that certain things won’t be tolerated.”
Lisa Bell, Tell Jane
Chadfield makes up costs by saving on real estate. While it does have some bricks and mortar, The Finish Line has virtual workers and takes its own kit to productions. “Nowadays, there’s less resistance. We’ve been vocal about our opinions on the industry and mental health struggles enough that clients who come to us understand that it’s part of our principles.”
Transforming Workplace Relationships
Talking, and more importantly, listening, are the focus of the Reverend Peterson Feital’s current research. Feital founded The Haven fifteen years ago, to look after those in the creative industries mentally, spiritually and emotionally. “In production, in the film industry, they are storytellers, but very often they’re not listening to each other’s stories very well.
“I’m helping people to understand how we listen to each other and relate better, because it’s all to do with relationships.”
One focus is on freelancers - how stress and distress is knitted up with financial wellbeing and how this impacts family life. “I’m interested in the family ecosystem, people don’t often understand what happens in the families,” says Feital.
He has also observed “a lack of understanding of what healthy boundaries
ANALYSIS
look like.” Especially in an industry where formal and informal often blur. “Sometimes they don’t know what is appropriate to share,” he says. “For example, they might disclose about a hidden disability and then feel insecure…I have to help them think, ‘what does a healthy relationship look like in the workplace?”
Another of Feital’s suggestions for work-life balance is to think twice before saying yes to a request. “Think: what am I saying no to for myself?”
Among the growing number of organisations set up to help with mental health and wellbeing in film and TV, Tell Jane, founded by Lisa Bell, helps production companies to investigate situations where toxic behaviour is reported, but also to prevent it, with training around inclusion, building frameworks and working with managers and HR.
“The freelance nature within the industry creates a fear around speaking,” says Bell. “We want to create environments where people feel confident that certain things won’t be tolerated.” She wants producers to encourage cast and crew to speak out if they feel lines are being crossed so that toxic behaviour can be nipped in the bud.
Cultivating Change
Where there’s bullying, she describes different personality types. She asks, “are they unaware or do they not care?... A freelancer might have moved around on different shows, may have been super successful in the industry, but because they don’t belong to an employer, they haven’t been invested in from a training perspective, developing people skills.”
For those bullies that do not care, says Bell, “they might not care about the impact on the individual, but if you talk about their reputation, they’re more likely to change. You’ve got to create incentives.”
Feital who has been bullied himself, underscores how vital it is to face down bullying individuals. “If we are not careful about this idea that we idolise the creative genius, that this excuses bad behaviour, then we are in trouble. When it comes to bad behaviour, we have to call it out.” Precisely why the Call It App – a reporting tool for the industry- was launched in 2021.
For those that might be subject to bullying, harassment or have other
Summer 2023
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