The Way We Roll
A seriously funny take on life from the disability driven duo... Simon Minty and Phil Friend.
The Way We Roll
Inclusively Made with Henry Smith
Somewhere near the Blue Mountains, just outside Sydney, Australia, something special is happening in production. Our guest, Henry Smith, shares insights about it and the organisation he has co-founded, Inclusively Made.
Henry and his partner, Genevieve Clay-Smith, have been creating human-centred films for many years. Henry explains how Genevieve initially stumbled upon working with talented disabled individuals, first by accident. Realising that this experience was enjoyable and not frequent enough, they decided to pursue it intentionally. They recognised the need to share the experiences and knowledge they have gained with others through Inclusively Made. It encompasses the entire production process and involves everyone. It is no longer about telling people why they should be involved; rather, it focuses on how to do so.
Inclusively Made aims to make inclusive production business as usual in the global production and entertainment industries. In just 12 months, they have had a huge impact. Henry shares his thoughts on the progress made so far and his plans for the future.
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Announcer 0:10
This is The Way We Roll presented by Simon Minty and Phil Friend. You can email us at mintyandfriend@gmail.com or search for minty and friend on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Simon Minty 0:31
Hello and welcome toThe Way We Rollwith me, Simon, Minty and me, Phil, Friend our guest today might be a little sleepy. It's late in the Blue Mountains, just outside Sydney and Australia, where he lives, plus he and his partner, Genevieve, have youngsters who keep them very busy. Welcome, Henry Smith; good to see you. Thank
Henry Smith 0:52
you very much for having me. Team. Great to be here.
Phil Friend 0:56
Great to meet you, Henry. And I know that you spent many years in media production, making human centered stories for film and business.
Simon Minty 1:03
Now I have met Henry and Genevieve a few times in London and, amazingly, in Sydney. And as well as being very nice people, I noticed they've got this special skill in that they they seem to be work with lots of different disabled people, and they just do it really well and make it look effortless. And they're and they're very passionate about it,
Phil Friend 1:25
and they founded an organization called Inclusively Made its vision is to see inclusion become business as usual in the global production and entertainment industries.
Simon Minty 1:36
Now Genevieve is busy at the moment, but we are delighted that we're gonna have a long form conversation with Henry. So Henry, my first question, looking at the website and what you're about, rather than just tell media makers and producers, they they must include more disabled people you you show them how to do it. It's almost every step of the way. Is that. Is that right?
Henry Smith 1:57
It is what we've realized, probably from a lot of trial and error, is this isn't a disability issue. This isn't about being more inclusive or hitting a diversity inclusion topic, and particularly with our everyone's great friend Trump over in the US trying to squash out DEI agendas. This actually isn't a DEI agenda thing. This is about accessibility for everybody, an audience and a consumer base and a workforce base that highly benefits from. This is the disability community, and we started our work in working with the disability community, which is where we've learned, I think, so much from. But it's only recently that we've it's daunting us. This isn't a disability issue or disability thing that that, because I think people can switch off a little bit. Either people get a go, Yeah, well, I'm really passionate about that, or majority of the audience kind of just switch off and go, yeah. It's another HR thing. It's just another corporate tick box. And it's not. This is about making content that everyone can engage with, everyone can see themselves, in which I think is a human right. Because imagine growing up, and many of our audience probably know this, imagine growing up and you never see yourself. You're just never represented. You're then told you're alien, you don't belong in this world, which is horrendous. This is about everybody being able to see themselves, and the other side, everyone being able to access this, that content, and engage with it and love it. And, yeah, it's cool space. Don't get me started. I guess that's why we're here.
Phil Friend 3:30
I mean, that naturally leads on to ask the question, so how did it come about? How did you and Genevieve? I mean, dream up the idea or, or, or get things started.
Henry Smith 3:41
Yeah it's all Genevieve fault. I say, We're the unintentional global leaders in inclusive filmmaking. We didn't plan this at all, and then how could you so I'll tell Genevieve story on her behalf. She's just very sad she couldn't come and be here and spend some time with you guys. She made a short film called Be my brother back in 2009 she was just finishing university, and she was doing some work with an organization here in Australia called Down Syndrome Australia, and they were making a documentary about participants of their programme all people with Down Syndrome and their family members about the circles of support around them. So how do you integrate into the world? And you do that by having these circles of support around you, family members, the your neighbor, the bus driver, whatever, who help you to be able to live a prosperous life. And she had was working on a documentary about this project, and she ended up directing the doc O. And halfway through production, they asked her to go and meet with a young man called Jared who was going to join the program, and they wanted her to go and suss him out to see, would he be a good fit for this documentary? So she said, no worries. And she's a young 19 year old. She was very, very young. And so she toddled out to his house in Western Sydney, and he opened the front door. And instead of saying, Hi, my name is Jared, he stood on the doorstep and he recited Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet the balcony scene, word for word, the entire soliloquy on his doorstep to Genevieve. And immediately, that moment, Genevieve realised this young man is an incredible actor, and of course, he's going to be great in the documentary. And of course, as she's gets to know him, and he he recites scenes from Lion King and bold and the beautiful, and like, you know, unbelievable performer. But he'd never been able to get an opportunity to act, to perform, because he was told, No, you have a disability, you will never make it. You can't be an actor. You're disabled, give up, go away. And so she said, Well, no, I think you can be magnificent. So she was in her final year of film school in uni, and she threw out her her final idea, her idea for a final film, and she wrote a film with Jared, starring him as in the main role. And she thought, well, if I'm going to make it inclusively in front of camera about Jared, well, I need to authentically, be authentic behind the scenes, and make it inclusively behind the scenes as well. So she put a casting call out, or call out to a small community of people with disabilities, saying, basically, hey, do you have a disability, and do you want to get into the film industry? Let me know. And five people came back to her and said, yes, I'd love to learn how to do this. She did a film making workshop in a friend's living room. Very basic, very simple, but taught five people how to work professionally on a film set. Not tokenistic, not come, you know, eat a cheese sandwich and just watch, but come and learn to actually have a career pathway in this. So Jared starred in the main role. They filmed it in out in Sydney, and these five young people worked on the film set under mentor. So everyone on the film crew were mentoring people with disability to learn how to do this. And so the film was a great success. So it won a film festival here in Australia called Tropfest, which at its time, was the biggest short film festival in the world. So it won Best Film, and Jared won Best Male Actor. Unbelievable. He's up against every actor. None of them have disability, and he won Best Actor. And she realized there is a very strong need for inclusive production and pathways. So she founded an inclusive film school to teach people to speak exactly what she'd done in that lounge room, but at a bigger scale, and that's now grown substantially, and is we've got classes all around the country. And at the same time, she and I started a film production company called Taste Creative. And in everything that we did, whether we were making a disability campaign or a bank commercial or an educational film. We were just inclusive. It's just what we did. Because once you've worked like that, once you just realize, well, why wouldn't you do that on every project? Because you realize all those conceptions around it's going to be hard. It's going to lessen the products quality, and it's going to cost us more money, absolute crap, absolute rubbish. Instead, your team works harder, it doesn't cost more money, and the quality increases, because everyone is so passionate to work there, because you're creating opportunities for those that couldn't get through. I always say to people that I came from a middle class, you know, affluent family in in South Australia, had everything going for me, a male and white from all the you know, on paper, it's got everything going for me, and I found it really hard to get into the film ministry, like I had to break my way. And it's a bloody hard industry to to get into. If you have a disability, those doors are firmly locked you cannot get in. So we saw this, the need for inclusion, and then we fast forward 15 years, and it's it's now just grown into something much more sustainable.
Simon Minty 8:46
It sounds like a clunky question, it happens. You stumble across something, you get involved, and go, Oh my goodness, this is amazing. So as far as I know, you and Genevieve are not disabled people, but you have disabled people as part of the organization or what you're doing, and this is just turned into the sort of just a very natural space for you to be in
Henry Smith 9:05
It just becomes the norm. It's not a too much of a kosher word, but we're very focused on normalizing inclusive production. This is not strange or different. So now through inclusive mode, which I'm sure we'll unpack a bit more. But I spend a lot of my time talking to very big corporate leaders and big production leaders who do multi million dollar advertising campaigns, and I say to them, we're correcting the sins of our forefathers, who just didn't do this, who didn't open part open doorways to everybody. It was a very kind of elitist incident. Still is. We're now just correcting that, because everyone looks this, no one looks this and says, Oh, that's nice, but you know, no thanks. Everyone looks at inclusive and production says, hang on. Why aren't we all just doing this as the norm? Why is this now becoming a thing? And I say, Yeah, tell me about it. Thanks. 15. Is to get it to this norm. And that's what, really, my last five years has been focused on actually making this possible for very big productions and corporate productions and advertising, to be able to pick this up. And it's not just a nice HR exercise and a nice tick box and hitting your disability inclusion plan, but actually embedding this into as we say. You know, our mission at inclusive made is to make it business as usual.
Phil Friend 10:27
How do you, Henry, I love this. I think this story is fabulous. So a young woman doing a degree finds herself in a room with some disabled people and decides that this would be fun. You know, there was no fear. There was no she knew nothing. So if she was making mistakes, she didn't know. Do you know what I mean, yeah, the people you talk to in the corporates or wherever else you're selling this idea are riddled with doubt and anxiety, aren't they? There's problems around every corner. I mean, for goodness sake, I might say the wrong thing. I might use the wrong how have you tackled that? Because I think Geneva, Genevieve and you have just went for it and it worked well. Phil met an actor on a doorstep that could say Romeo and Juliet. What a bit of luck that was. But
Henry Smith 11:20
like her journey, then, like our journey together was, you just figure it out. Neither of us have got degrees in disability support. Yeah, totally, you figure it out. And if you're if you are pushing in the right direction, you will work it out, and people will have grace that you are heading the right direction. You're not trying to rip them off. So to answer your question like, how you make it possible for particularly, you know, a lot of organizations that are terrified of doing the wrong thing, being canceled, being called out for being tokenistic, whatever, that's really been my mission, and inclusively made, is to build a framework that takes that away. And that's and that's and that's exactly what it's done. That's the number one focus, is to make this possible. Because we did it, because we didn't have a lot to lose if our production company got canceled, whatever that means. If people criticize it, that doesn't mean a lot. We're not very big. But if you're a multinational brand, and you're suddenly in the news tonight for being tokenistic, for whatever reason, it's big business. So we took all of our learnings from 15 years and packaged it into a certification to say this is the standard of what to do. Also the other side is what we're seeing is maybe what I should share, is kind of the impetus of what started this, because over the last 15 years I'd been I'd spent 14 years going around to the biggest brands, creative agencies, film producers, showing them inclusive production, and they'd look at it and go, Wow, that's so inspiring. I'm glad you guys are doing it, because inspiring. Yeah, I hate, hate, inspire and become part of our story. Because no one disagreed with us. Everyone said, Yep, that's really important, but it's just not high enough priority for us. It's just, it, just it seems too hard. So that was my first clue of, okay, it's too hard. Was not we figured out. It's not hard. We were two 21 year olds when we started this. It's not hard, if we can figure it out, big corporates can figure it out. And so we had to simplify it down in a way that everyone could get it. Then about two years ago, Unilever and their head off around the corner from you guys over in London, reached out to us and our inclusive film school and said, We need to get serious about our inclusive production. We own half of the FMCG brands in the world. Some of our brands are doing a decent job at being inclusive, but not all of them. And how do we learn and teach our our production team and our creative agents how to actually be inclusive? And you guys seem to be one of the only ones that are doing it and figured it out. So we spent a year building out toolkits together to teach their their agencies, how they could be inclusive. And then their Global Head of Production turned to me and said, Okay, this is about to launch. We're we're about to make a global announcement that says, by 2025 every Unilever production, over 100,000 pounds will be made inclusively. And I went, holy crap. This is the start. This is the beginning, where people with money are putting their align the sand and not just saying, Yeah, it's a nice day. We'll do it if we can. They're saying, no, no, this is a standard. This is how we are going to work. And so she turned to me and said, How are you going to deal with the demand? Because your name is on all the training, which goes out to all of our creative agencies, which is, by the way, most creative agencies in the world work with one of the Unilever brands. And so that was the start of inclusively made, because we had created inclusive made five or six years ago with the vision for what it is now, but just no demand behind it. My vision for it was that it would become the standard of inclusion in production. It would just set, set the benchmark. Of here's how you do. And if you're below this, it's not inclusive. Good try, but it's not inclusive. So here's the standard, not from a fear point, but to give people the confidence, this is what you've gotta do, and so you're not don't be worried about being canceled, because if you've met this bar, which is not hard, you're doing okay. You're doing well. And so we launched inclusive mate off the back of that announcement, saying this is the standard, and we built the certification based on eight pillars of inclusion, from inclusive concept development.
Simon Minty 15:30
Sorry go ahead, yeah, we'll come to it. And I want to unpick a little bit of that. And you've answered. I had another question, which was, did you think we've been doing this for a while? Why don't we package this up and offer as a service? But you actually did, Philip. When Phil and I ran the business, clients would come to us and say, This is our problem, yeah. How do you solve it? And then we created the solution, yeah. And it sounds like you were already there, and you just wait for the client that said, now we want you to do it. And off you go. And off you go. And you had your first client, and then and a fabulous client, because you leave were really good. What I wanted to say is, on your website says, in the first six months, you certified 19 productions class, 35 inclusive roles, 20 inclusive mentees and hired 22 inclusive group. Can you talk through one or two of those productions and what someone did to get certified, and we will come on to the eight pillars as well. I promise. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Henry Smith 16:27
Well, maybe we've got, like, the interest of what drove these brands to now want to do it, because Phil, like, we picked up before, about that inspiring note, like, the worst word in the disability community is, oh, you're inspiring. I'd spent 14 years inspiring agencies and producers to do well, and after Unilever, I flipped my message from a from a message of motivating and inspiring to a warning. And my tone totally shifted. My language totally shifted. I've started warning everyone that if you are not working inclusively, you're going to get left behind the valuable 500 put out a report, I think was last year, that the disability the disability community's consumer spend globally, is $13 trillion you take that number to a marketer and say, if you are not talking to the disability community authentically, you are not tapping into that number. That is a very big number that you need to be tapping into, otherwise you're missing 20% of your market. And so we stopped inspiring and motivating. We started saying, this is the stand to work to and all these big brands suddenly turned around said, how do we do it? And so that's where we built up this framework. So some great organizations. You know, this year in Australia, there's quite a few big broadcasters, and nine is the largest broadcaster in the company, biggest media company. And so they did the Olympics and Paralympics broadcast. And so they actually came on board with inclusive, made as our first foundation partner, saying, This is really important. We want to do this properly from the start. We want to back this. And so they were able to certify the entire Paralympic broadcast. And it wasn't hard. They didn't have to reinvent the wheel at all. They just used our framework to get that certified, and that included things like having mentees involved during production. Again, that goes back to Genevieve insight 16 years ago that she did in a friend's lounge room, that's a mentee creating a pathway for a person that wouldn't be able to come onto that project, teach them, give them an opportunity not to have this tokenistic community experience. Was like, Oh, it's a nice day out. So no, no, this is a pathway. So you could actually have a professional career in this industry. So for for the Paralympic broadcast, there was editor assist, editor assistants and whatnot. They were working through the night with footage. There were talent on set. In front of camera. Were inclusive. The broadcast was accessible, so if it was captioned, there was audio description. Just working to our framework, saying these are all the things that we are able to do. And the cool thing about the framework is that every production is different, and so there's not just, here's the 10 things you have to do, here's the seven steps to get rich. So it's horrible mentality to use the framework and work out, what are the things that you can do on this project, and some things you can't. But based on the nature of production, that's totally fine, but you can still do with these activities and meet a standard to get certified. Um, so there's a lot of productions that we saw with with big corporates as well around the Paralympics is a big year for that, but without just using the framework to hire people with a disability as mentees or as crew members, inclusive casting and accessible audition processes, accessible broadcast, ensuring that their documentation is accessible, really cool, and it gave them the confidence to be able to do it themselves, rather than we've got to go and hire really expensive consultant who's gonna do it for us. And the end of that process, we still are none the wiser. We don't know how to do it. We're nervous as hell. We're just trusting that person, but they now become the expert,
Phil Friend 19:51
Henry just to jump in, one of the problems that we've encountered when Simon and I worked together, you'd go to an employer and say, you need, you know, want to recruit more to. Disabled staff and the supply side was the problem. Where are these disabled staff? Yeah. How have you dealt with that issue? Because not only is the world suddenly gone, oh goodness, we've got to be more diverse in our work. And for very good reason, where are you finding the talent? How are you finding the talent? Because that's incredibly important to the role, what you're doing, isn't it?
Henry Smith 20:21
Yeah, supply and demand. Super hard. Yeah. So we've, we've been very focused on increasing the demand. That's the first problem. Build the demand and the supply will come. But you can't build the demand and have no supply. So I say to a lot of people that in corporate Australia, about 10 years ago, corporate Australia said, We want more women in leadership. And everyone went, Oh, great. Good idea. Why aren't we doing that? And they said, Well, where are all these executive women at a CEO level that can run our big banks and our consulting companies and our insurance firms like they don't exist. There's not many of them anyway, because there haven't been the pathways. The solution is go back to the primary schools and high schools and make pathways for young girls to come through and saying, if you would like a pathway to be a the CEO of a big bank in Australia, you can here's the pathway to do so. So we have to work with organizations to realize that supply chain is not going to immediately come because you've told them for decades, there is no path here, so don't try. So you need to flip that. So what we've done is we've built out our a network of inclusion partners. So in certification, there's eight pillars, which we'll chat through. But against each of those pillars, we've matched all the organizations to begin with here in Australia, these are all the organizations that can help you, because no company can be a one stop shop Inclusively Made is not a one stop shop where the first point in the process of, here's your here's the roadmap for inclusion. Build your inclusion plan. Now you know what to do. Then the question is, great, who can help us with all the things? So there's all these organizations that either already specialize in things like inclusive casting or recruitment with Mentees or crew members, but there's not many of them. But the great thing is, with increasing demand comes increasing supply, because there's a lot of people that want these pathways. We've seen that through the inclusive film schools, there's a lot of people that want to come through here, and they don't want to just work on a short film, they want to work on TV commercials. They want to work on big Disney movies and Marvel movies. And that's really important, as anybody would want to do, so it's, it's a bit of a catch 22 to get in. You need demand for supply and you need supply for demand. But by building up that network, it is, it is very quickly and growing, and seeing the demand for that just within 12 months increase. But we've been very intentional to build that network out to point all those clients saying, here are the organizations that can help and for the organizations that come into the market, saying, I want to be an inclusive casting agent. I want to be a recruitment firm that specializes in hiring people with disability out. I
Simon Minty 22:51
The bit that I quite like about this. I have empathy. I trained some people called access links, and they're people within independent production companies that would oversee any adjustments that might be made, but then they might go to these individual suppliers, as you say, whether it's talent or maybe it's equipment or maybe it's support or whatever, and sometimes they've not actually dealt with big, big organizations, so they have to up their game. And that's good, but that's how it should be. And they're like, oh, wow, we need to be even better. But you mentioned a couple of times the eight pillars of inclusion. We build them up now to be something, no pressure, no pressure. Yeah, better be good. Everything rests on this.
Phil Friend 23:31
They should, because that's what you do with pillars and thankfully.
Simon Minty 23:36
But it's, it's, it's, I like the concept because, one, it's very tangible. Two, it gives you the structure, but maybe talk us through a little bit about those eight pillars of inclusion. What do they mean? Sure,
Henry Smith 23:47
so the way that we built certification is very similar. Not sure what it's like in the UK, but if you want to prove your ID, you go into a government office and you have to take certain documents of ID that are worth different points. So your driver's license is worth 40 points, your gas bill is worth 10 points, and you need to get 100 points to prove who you are. So you're taking your and you work out, what are the things that I've got, I've got my passport, I've got my driver's license, I'll get gas and Bill when I need something else, whatever. And it tells you, so we use the exact same model. So to get certified, you need to get 100 points across the eight pillars. And you get to pick and choose again, because they because every project is different. You choose what's right for you. And so we we worked out from all of our projects we've done. There were eight key things that we did on every project that touched every area of production. The first four are very focused on people, and the second four are focused on admin and process. So it starts with Inclusive concept development, about developing the concept inclusively with people with disability. Now that's a that's an interesting one. If you're doing the Paralympic broadcast or a disability ad, whatever, that makes perfect sense and a bit of a no brainer for authenticity. But if you're just making a car, people kind of scratch their head and go hang on. Why would we consult a you know person with disability or an organization that that specialize in Disability Services? Then they realize, again, that $13 trillion number, if we want to speak to that audience, we need to be thinking inclusively. And so how would our car ride actually speak to the disability community? They look at that and go, Oh, you've thought about us. Um, so it starts with concept development, and then goes through all the way through to accessible broadcast. So in between includes things like we've kind of touched on inclusive casting, inclusive mentee roles. So that's people with disability that haven't been able to work in the industry. So it's an attachment or a work experience role, inclusive crew members, professional career. Again, it's not tokenistic of hey, Simon, you're a person with disability. How come you? Why don't you come and hold the camera? So no, no, this is the professional camera operator or professional makeup artist or writer who has worked their way up through the pathway, and you're able to create opportunities. And it was all the way through then to accessible broadcast, which is things like captions or description sign language and whatnot. And so we built out an inclusion planner that people can go on with their production and live, pick and choose, and see their points go up and down. And producers get really competitive and go, Oh, I'm at 99 points, or at 120 half car, or made 140 What else can I do? And they realized these things aren't hard. We're doing 80% of this already. We just didn't realize, and because I've got a producing background, we just built this for me. This need to be a system that was really simple and quick, that isn't governance, isn't going to burden people down, but actually benefits producers, and it's just another tool in their belt. Of this is how I can be inclusive. It. It generates their inclusion plan. They go, I've got my roadmap. I know what to do. This tells me what to do in pre production, post is all the things that I know. How I'm going to get certified. I'm going to show this to the clients. The client now has confidence in us that we're going to do it. They get really excited and say, Oh, do you want more funding for this? This is brilliant. This is this is great. Sticking boxes that we're trying to tick we don't know how to do, and it just works
Phil Friend 26:54
for everyone. Very cool. So how do you deal with the naysayers who say, Hang on a minute. You're not disabled. Shouldn't you be disabled? I mean, tell us a bit about how that. I know you have a CEO who is disabled, but just check through with us. How you how your credibility? You know that that kind we're in woke territory here, aren't we, but it's that kind of idea that your authenticity issue? Yeah,
Henry Smith 27:22
it's a great question, because it's something that I not often. I always pull myself up on because I've been an ally of the disability community for a long time. But as you mentioned, I'm not a person with disability. What gives me the right to do so? And so it's about working in community. So as we mentioned, our CEO, Paul nunari is a Paralympian, athlete, brilliant advocate in the dispute community we've worked together for a decade. Sounds very similar to you. Guys built on a great friendship, but very good working relationship, that we push each other on and whatnot. And so we often come together to work out, what is the core thing that we need to be doing here, and what do we need to be community? Communicating with authenticity and with experience? And so we bring together all the strands. A lot of my background is the experience from producing and how to talk eye to eye with experienced executive producers and commercial leaders and whatnot. But then also all of our work, consulting and working in collaboration with disability communities to bring them in, because we have a firm belief that you can't use a person with a disability to your own advantage. To say, hey, hey, Simon, come and work on my project you want. You're not going to get a credit. I might not pay you, but I just need to tick the box. I've got a person with disability. You have to work in a mentality of, if I'm going to work with you, Simon, I need to be thinking about your career pathway, and how is this project going to help you to get wherever you want to get to in life, and if it doesn't stop, and that's what that's kind of the match we've done in everything in our company, every film production that we've done is this needs to bless the community that we're working in. It needs to be a two way street, not just I'm going to come in, get what I need and get out. This needs to leave the community better than how we left with we've done these projects in Mongolia, in Japan, all over the world, and it needs to leave those communities way stronger than when we came in and more sustainable than when we when we've gone again as well, because we we're not coming in as a hero saying, Hey, we've got all the answers. It's coming. Say we've got some experience. We've learned some things that don't work, and things that do work tell us about your experience, and let's find a pathway of what's going to work for your community. So we've always worked very closely together, but it's always top of mind of we need to leave with lead with authenticity and ensure that we are leading with best practice the whole way through.
Simon Minty 29:39
Yeah, and you've worked with BBC, Google, Disney, they've been some of your clients. Do you have a favorite? Not favorite? Who's best in class, who is doing something? And you're like, oh, wow, this is amazing. Could you give us an example, dude?
Henry Smith 29:54
There's, there's, there's different favorites for different reasons. You know, there's projects that I've produced. That are wonderful. There's campaigns worth advice on, but we launched inclusively, made only in April last year. It's not even a year old. When we launched it, it was very successful straight away. And as people say, Well, it's an overnight success. I said, Yeah, it's a 15 year old. It's taken a long time to get there, but on day one of launching, there was a big brand here in Australia called Big W. They're part of an organization called Woolworths. It's the biggest supermarket in the country. None of them as well. And big W on a lot of big department stores in Australia, and the marketing director turned around on day one and said, This is business as usual. We're going to do this on everything, on every project as standard. Now, at the start, our commitment that we're asking from brands was certify one project. I didn't want to freak people out. They want to scan start with one, then they'll realize this isn't hard and scary, and they'll do it on everything. But this marketing director, on day one got this is business as usual. This is standard. And from that launch she has led on her creative agency and their production company. This is a standard on everything that we do. And then notice that the difference that it's been seen like from the public perception that they've suddenly realized, Oh, these campaigns have people with disability in it, and it's not a tokenistic or that poor person, or, you know, the victim or and it's they're just another person that's in that production. They're nothing special. They're just a normal part of society. It's just been exceptional to watch them go and I work. I've been working with them very closely, because they come up against different challenges. Like, at the moment, they're working through another project to work out, do we need a person with disability in front of camera? And we've worked out from a certification point, they don't need to. They're doing all these other activities behind the camera, and for a certain project, they didn't need to, that's totally fine, but they're really pushing it as far as they can, because they've got the, it's not even the vision of it. They've got the importance of saying, This is business as usual. This is nothing special or fancy. It's just a society. We're just a long way behind where we should be. They, for me, are gold standard of where organizations should be operating, and their partners, their agencies and their production companies. We train them all together, and so they're all in the same room, shoulder, shoulder, and they all just got it immediately and said, yep. And they're thinking about not just, how do we do this in our advertisement? What's our store experience? What's our recruitment like? You know, this needs to be authentic through everything that we're doing. So what is that store experience like for a personal disability, and what disability, and then our recruitment process, all of those things, it was just the light bulbs all went off of, how do we be authentically inclusive in everything? And they've come up against hurdles. You know, heard like people within the business that don't quite get and that's hard, but they've kept saying, Yeah, hurdles or not, we fight through this because this is important, not just we tried and failed.
Simon Minty 32:38
And I'm presuming, and this has happened in in stuff that I've been involved in, it goes from, yes, we're doing it because we've got the inclusively made and we it makes it sense business as usual. But then the joy, which is they sunny up with these amazingly creative ideas that they've never had before. You've got a new bunch of talent. You've got new sources of stories and ideas, yeah, and that's when I really get excited, because we go into and they're like, Oh, this is really, I mean, have there been a couple of times where you're like, Oh, this is just perfect or seamless or interesting?
Henry Smith 33:06
The moments that stand out to me is as a part of creating an inclusive workplace, we share a template for an inclusion statement, which is a very simple paragraph. We ask them to rewrite it for themselves, so it's personal to their company, but they put it on their call sheets. The first ad reads it out on set on at the start of the morning. So this is an inclusive production, and I explained what that means, and the amount of veteran crew members that we've seen come out of the woodwork. They've said, I'm a person with disability which is non visible. I've hidden it for 1020, 30 years, because I thought I would be I would I would lose work opportunities, and I'd be judged and whatever else. But you're now saying this is highly valued. We saw an amazing production go through it. It was a great campaign done with a big insurance company here, and there was a competitive pitch out to all these production companies to pitch for the work, and the production company won the work, and based on budget and creative and whatever else, I was on set for the production as a bit of a facilitator, and I was talking to the director, and she said, I'm a person with disability that I've never shared that with anyone on production, and she won the job as the director because of her creativity, not because she's A person with disability no one knew except her, but to see that she had the comfort to now say I'm now respected fully for who I am and valued fully for who I am, and I can bring that to the table. I can bring my experience and my perspective to the table. As a director at the top of the pyramid of this production, it's just like to see that all just starting to unravel, even when we we guide clients through and they're going through the inclusive crew member part and say, Oh, we don't know any crew members with disability. I say, tick the box. There's a high chance that members of your crew have disability. They've just never told you, and not because that's their fault or their problem. You just haven't created an environment where. That's okay to do. So
Announcer 35:02
this is the way we roll. Presented by Simon Minty and Phil Friend. You can email us at minty and friend@gmail.com or just search for minty and friend on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Phil Friend 35:17
How Henry, let's just turn for a moment to the commercial side of the work, the stuff that you do. How does the financial bit work? How do you get paid? You know, what? I don't mean how much, because that's one of our business but, but how do you happy to tell it, you know? Yeah. I mean, people listening to this might well be thinking, actually, I've got an idea that I could take to market. And how do you how does that work for you guys?
Henry Smith 35:42
Yeah, so it's very important, so we're not a charity. So this needs to work as a commercial business that stands on its own, because this is too important to fail. This can't just succeed on my energy or someone else's energy, because as soon as I stop, if I take a holiday, if I get hit by a bus, the whole thing stops it can't this needs to commercially succeed. And also commercial success is what like commercial standards is what people in the commercial industry talk to, if you're if this is a charity, it doesn't feel like it's got substance. So the commercial model for us was very important. So to get certified, it's $1,500 Australian per project. So intentionally, a very, very low figure. So if you're working on a $500,000 production, we're talking a tiny, tiny percent. And so what that does is that they build their inclusion plan online. On our inclusion planner, it gives them the framework, and it literally generates the inclusion plan. It's basically their roadmap. It will help them to identify, where do we need some help? And they go, Oh, we have no idea how to do inclusive casting, but we really want to. That's when they will then go and either come to us as consultants, or through our inclusion network, go to an inclusive casting agent or a producer or whatnot who can help them. And that's where some additional costs would come in that they would factor in. But again, they're leading it. Their $1,500 has stayed the same. For certification, they do their production with as much or as little help as they need. Then once they hit post production, they come back and we certify. We literally just hold back up their inclusion plan, and we talk it through them, saying, how'd you go for this? How did you go for that? And a part of their inclusion plan is it tells them it is what we're certifying you against. Because particularly in the commercial space, when they're pitching on projects, if a client said, actually this standard, we want this standard on our project, the agency, the producer, has to guarantee that they're going to hit standards. So it's really important that at the start of a production, they know exactly how they're going to do it, and then they're going to be able to fulfill and if something changes, what can they do to increase their again? I don't have to get too much into the points, because it's not about that, but it's what can we do to maintain standards so that we're not dropping the bar and claiming that we're an inclusive production. But really we we fumbled around a bit so so the financial model is based on on certification, organizations can additionally get go and get training. Yeah, with this year, launched an accreditation model, which is allowing organizations on a 12 month membership to be able to certify everything they do, but without paying for every single project. So again, it means for those organizations like Big W and Woolworths and nine that inclusion just becomes business as usual, because it literally is. It's now embedded into their their process of everything they do, and they don't have to pay $1,500 every single time. It's just we paid an annual fee, and now everything we make is is certified, which is brilliant. That's
Phil Friend 38:27
working exceptionally well. Do they show that in the credits of the I mean, obviously, wouldn't do that in an advert, but a film or a documentary or something of that sort. Well, yeah, no, that's shown, you know, accredited by so it's kind of, that's right. I'm a bit of a kite mark, that's
Henry Smith 38:41
right, and that's when, when I saw the strategy in the picture for this five, six years ago. But there's no demand for it. That's all we it was our commercial productions that we did in our production company. We would put that stamp on the end so it come up with the inclusive logo and said This production was made inclusively with people with disability, and so that particularly for projects that don't have people disability in front of camera. You in front of camera, in our car commercial or educational series of films, and it comes up at the end, audience suddenly go, Oh, now I get it, now that this makes sense. Why this felt authentic, whatever us. And so it gives that standard. But what has been really cool is, yes, feature films, TV series, they all put that stamp at the end of production, which is great, but TV commercials actually bringing as well, even though that air time is very expensive, they're putting the inclusively made stamp at the end, down the corner or somewhere on the production to show this production was made inclusive because audiences want to know. It came out of Paramount insights. I think it was 2003 did a study, and it showed just the exponential growth that consumers demand, and people watching entertainment demand the authenticity of content. So you've got to show it, and you've got to show that you're working to that standard, particularly when it's not visible, which often it's not. Yeah,
Simon Minty 39:54
as I know, the reason we do it is because we want it to happen. Um, but occasionally, as you say, you might not see someone on screen who has the visible disability, so people don't know. And I also kind of think if a go on, if an organization is doing something and doing it well, they can have that. They should have the same well, they should put it in their annual report, is part of their CSR, whatever it might be, because I think that encourages more to happen. Um, you've alluded to something in the the clients you worked with for a while, and the model and how it operates, forgive the interview question. In five years time, what do you think inclusively made will look like? What's the the ambition? What's the idea?
Henry Smith 40:35
Simple, one liner. It's a global standard of production.
Phil Friend 40:39
So what we're building, at the moment, Australia taking over the world. Well, it's, I think
Henry Smith 40:43
it's Australia providing a solution, regardless of where it comes from, the wonderful thing. So I'm born and bred Australian, and at times that's really challenging because we are so far from everybody. But it is the perfect testing ground. New Zealand is even better. It's a very small island, and a lot of organizations go to New Zealand to test a new product. Australia is is my still so small globally, but it's become, what I've learned, how much of a blessing it actually is to be here, is this is the perfect testing ground. Is a perfect place to launch, because we can, and we have been able to get all the bugs out of the system, because we're able to test it with the biggest brands, creative agencies and producers in the country, but we're able to sit with them at the same table, talk to eye to eye. And what I've loved is they're not clients while we work, and there's an exchange of services and consulting and whatever else, we are all working in the same direction for a vision of inclusion and production. They're sitting down as advisors, like a lot of our top clients are on our advisory board or are key consultants to us, because they believe so strongly in what we're doing, and they know that this has to happen. This can't fail, and we don't want to see we can't see this fail because of just a commercial challenge or a business model that didn't quite work. So in five years time, what we're rolling out now will be global, and so we're running it out. The goal this year in Australia is actually you guys the first to hear this. This hasn't been announced in Australia yet, but in in by the by December 3, International Day of People with disability, we will be saying, we're calling it the inclusive and it's the top 100 brands and agencies in Australia that have picked this up as a standard. Say this is a standard we are working to next year, it'll be another 100. The year after that, it'll be another 100. So by 2030 it'd be 500 companies. That model is then just duplicate and just rolled out internationally, because we've seen this model work, and we're working with similar organizations globally that can pick this up and say, This is just how you do it. Like a lot of companies have identified the what like, what do we need to do? Great, that's awesome. And everyone goes, Yeah, we need to do that. How do we do it? That's got a question inside, what
Phil Friend 42:45
about, what about, I'm sorry to jump in, but I'm just, I'm just so excited. It's, it's, what about Bollywood? What about one of the things Australia? I I don't know huge amounts about Australia, but Australia does have good relationships with certain parts of the world because of the trading that you have with them. So China, for example, the Philippines, various Thailand. But these countries, these areas of the world, present very different challenges, don't they, in the world that you're operating in. So what about somewhere like Bollywood and I mean, okay, Rome wasn't built in a day, but yeah,
Henry Smith 43:21
this is what we learned working with Unilever. Is because it was so complex for them to roll anything out, because they work with agencies in every single country, that what a New York agency does versus a Mumbai agency is totally different, but the framework is exactly the same, and not just for the disability community. We've used this framework for so many marginalized communities, LGBTI, refugees, whatever, because it's a framework of seeing people and saying, You deserve to be here, and your voice is important, and everyone is treated with respect. It's very simple. It's not about everyone is equal. It's everyone is treated with respect and equity. And so what we learned with Unilever is you give the framework, and then you give the autonomy to the local group to be the experts. We've put this in and the whole way through, it's Donald Miller. Is a brilliant author out of the US, and he talks a lot on the from a storytelling point, this notion of the hero and the guide. And he helps a lot of organizations to flip their marketing. So I'm going to be off tangent, but I promise I'll bring it around to flip your marketing from stop being the hero and saying to everyone, how great am I. I am your hero. No, no, you're their guide. They are Pinocchio. You are Jiminy Cricket. You're going to guide them through so they can be the hero of their own story. Whether that's unblocking their drain, you're the guide to help them so they can be the hero. Oh, husband, wife, you're so wonderful. You unblocked it because use that product. How? Then they're the hero. You do the exact same thing. So our framework turns them into the hero. They become the experts. Because we say, here's a framework so you can't fail. Here's all organizations that can help you, but you now lead it through. You work out, what does casting look like in your area? When we did this model years ago? Japan, the disability community is very different. Here in Australia, it's very, very hidden. There's no film schools or organizations that are creating pathways, and so we had a very different challenge to, how do we make an inclusive film in Tokyo? But we use the exact same framework, empowered local organizations, equip them with the tools, and said, No, you guys are the experts, and they were able to do it. Since we've gone, have been able to continue doing that, but it's giving the framework so that they're speaking into it. I'm not coming in as a savior and saying, Alright, I'm the expert. Here's how to do it. No, I'm, I'll guide. But you guys are the heroes of this.
Simon Minty 45:34
That's a real skill as well. And I know Phil and I from our international work, and so one of the joys I like is the big international corporates. They, they're the same company. They and some of the ideas that they have will improve disability in a certain country, maybe more than government, or more than local laws, but getting it right to not come in and get as in we are the expert. That's a real balance. But I really like it. I think it's great. I feel we need to talk about a little bit about Australia and disability. And I'm wondering, is there anything that you're super proud of being an Australian person, and how you approach disability beyond inclusively made? Oh, that's a broad question. It was quite a big one. I'm sorry, as I said, this is hard.
Henry Smith 46:21
Well, I think I don't, don't have the authority to say this from my international experience, but my gut is that everyone has a version of this same mentality that when you see something's different to you say it's a person with disability walking down the street instead of confronting or doing something embarrassing with that person. You'll cross the road to avoid it. I don't want to do the wrong thing. I don't want to say the wrong thing or embarrass or trip you over or whatever. So I'll go on the other side of the street. There's this real kind of polite avoidance, you know, whatever. Yeah. And that very much happens in Australia, and that you touched on that earlier, about organizations going we want to do that, but it's too high of risk. We can't take that risk. Something great about Australians is that there's a bit of a can do attitude. And if when you when you can tap into that, and that gets pulled out of corporate Australia a little bit, because there's so much pressure to make money, dividends, profit, blah, blah, blah, so that kind of, you can't be too much of a larrikin can do. But when you kind of tap into that, because that's not that we were larrikins, but this real can do attitude to just figure it out. That's how we got to where we are. We just figured it out. We made mistakes, never arrogantly, but we made mistakes and we learned from them. To then go, there's a better way to do this. There's a better way to engage, to include, to honor someone, whatever. And so we've made lots of mistakes, which we now teach people. You know, the better ways to do things. But people will have a go in Australia, they'll they'll look at that like the marketing director at Big W and look at that and just outlandishly say, that's our new business as usual, not sitting down. Go hang on. Let me check out the paperwork and talk to the bean counters and see if we can make a work. And have took the lawyers and the risk assessors have come No, no, that's that's our standard. That's what we're going to do, and we'll figure out the rest later. And that's kind of what we did, is you jump and you learn how to make the parachute on the way down.
Phil Friend 48:13
That's a brilliant idea.
Simon Minty 48:14
Yeah, I think there's a nice if I interpret that also, there's less cynicism. There's a let's give it a try and see. And that's a really healthy attitude. I really like that. Let me ask another very awkward question. Then, as I'm on the roll, is there anything when you look across to the UK in terms of what we do around inclusion and disability, go, Yeah, okay, I quite like that. Or they've got something good going there. To
Henry Smith 48:38
me, the UK is gold standard. It's not perfect. It's got a long way to go, but it's 10 years ahead of where Australia is. UK will be most likely, the first region that we will will expand out to to test because of just how advanced the UK is. It's, to me, like disability is so much more normalized. It's just a part of life. Like you look at any TV production, anything that BBC is creating Channel Four, it's just so much more inclusive than what's happening anywhere else in the world. But what I love is the cohort of inclusive organizations, and that's what actually inspired me to create our inclusion partners, is when I talked to one and Simon, you were very kind to help me to connect him with a few of them. I talked to one, and they'd say, Oh, if you talk to x, y and z and that all refer to each other. And I realized really quickly they're all arm in arm. And there's a few organizations here in Australia. And to your question before, Phil, about supply and demand, as the demand increases, supply is increasing as well. What I'm working very hard to do very quickly, is say to all these organizations, we are not in competition with each other. We are linked arms. We have to work together so that when someone comes to me, I'm going to refer them out to you and you and you, because you do brilliant things in your lanes. And if you're competing with each other, it's going to fall over very quickly. And I love that about the so many of these different organizations, particularly in in media and inclusion. They were all knew what they did very. Well, and we're okay with the fact that other people do other things better, and they said, but this is what we do really well. We're respected for that. And if you want to do, you know, accessible broadcast, if you want to go and talk inclusive casting, these guys are brilliant. Go and talk to so and so. And just seeing that cohort the network, it just to me, I might have the perception wrong, but it took away the competitiveness. I said, we're figuring this out together, like I look at a colony of ants. They're not competitive. They're together, building something that one of them couldn't do on their own. And that's the only way to solve something as big as this, globally, is that we have to do this all together, versus I'm a one stop shop. I did the whole thing. I'm the expert. I'm the hero of the story. It's all that method that doesn't work. It only works when we're this global colony of ants all doing our little parts to work together to a much greater sum of our individual parts.
Phil Friend 50:49
I mean, we're getting towards the end of our time now, but taking what you've just said, What would you ask of our listeners? What do you think our listeners might thinking about your aunts, you know, and working together? Because I think you're right about Britain in that sense. I think Simon and I, over the years, we've been working in the field, have come across some extraordinary organizations, extraordinary individuals. And there is, in some ways, they're competitive, because you want to be better than they are, but you're collaborating on so much. What is it the people listening to this might do to support what you're trying to do?
Henry Smith 51:30
I'm a firm believer in talking about what you're for and not what you're against, talking about what you're against, politician or company, stance, whatever, and tearing it down doesn't help anything. It doesn't help anybody. But when you talk about you talk about what you're for, it builds them up, and it highlights to everybody else what is important. So wherever your voice is, whether it's talking to your neighbors, or where your consumer dollar goes, talk about what you're for. When you see a brand that's being inclusive, talk about them. Tell everyone else how great that is, because then the other brands would say, Well, hang on. We need to do that. We want to be like that. Like when we launched, we bought, brought the top brands together. They all aligned to be inclusive. It was all the other brands that weren't there that suddenly said, Oh, hang on. Why aren't we there this bit of FOMO? And so I think as ants, we can all we let's not we can all do our part, but our voices are actually really important to talk about what we're for. When you see a brilliant supermarket, they didn't, they're advertising. They included a person with disability, and didn't make a big song and dance about it was just normal. It's just business as usual. Shop there go like, take your consumer dollar there, tell them, with your money or your time or your your presence, going to their shop. Tell them that that's really great, promote the movies that are that work inclusively. Yes, like, there's a place for those that kind of call out and criticize, but I think the positive voice is so much stronger. So when you call out, when you see it done well, so that was awesome. That was great.
Simon Minty 52:56
Positive ants, is what I mean. Positive
Phil Friend 53:00
ants, yeah,
Simon Minty 53:04
thank you so much, Henry. I knew it'd be a delight, and I there might be other organizations like you, but I still think it's unique. I, as I said at the early one in the in the show, the shift from you must do this to this is how you can do it, and that encouragement and that framework, it is hugely useful, because I think there is a shift, and I do think lots of different productions want to do it, but they get a bit faffy And they don't quite know how to do it properly, or they can't see that framework. I think you're really onto an amazing idea, both you and Genevieve. And I hope your tentacles, I'm putting other animals in now. I hope the and spread and but Noah's
Henry Smith 53:44
atom analogies, I like it. Yeah,
Phil Friend 53:48
I think, for my part, I think, I think I've been on this planet quite a long time, and I've been working on disability for, I don't know how many years I've been disabled, since I was three, and there are people you meet along that journey who just kind of make you feel your their company's worth keeping, and you're one of them. I think the passion that comes off you, I don't know what Genevieve is like, if she's anything like you guys,
Henry Smith 54:18
but I do think you got the lesser half tonight, but
Phil Friend 54:21
Well, I think the two of you must be irresistible, because what seems to work, in my experience, is when you give a shit, yeah, when you when it really matters to you. And I think what comes off you in absolute waves is your passion and your determination to make this project work. And clearly it is
Henry Smith 54:44
that's very kind. It's if I can encourage everyone that's listening. Because what I saw that Genevieve insight started, she used what she had in her hands, and what she had in her hands was a camera and a tripod, and she goes, I'm a filmmaker. I can do something with this. I'm. A politician that can change laws. I don't have lots of money to do lots of expensive things, but I can do something with this camera. You look at what you've got, whether you're in the workplace, whether you're a stay at home parent, whatever you are, we've all got something that we can do to help someone this. This is what we learnt from that circle of support for people with Down syndrome. From that the documentary at the start is that if you're the bus driver, if you sell fruit, the green growth, or whatever, we all can do something. Again, being in these little lands, we all can do something. Then it's using that tool to do something good. And Geneva and I are filmmakers, and then my last 15 years in business has taught me the business side of what's going to work and whatnot. And we go, okay, let's use that as a tool. How can we use that to actually make a difference? And so when you see it does actually make a difference, that's why I love talking to people yourselves, because it's kindred spirits. We've used something that we've got, and we're talking to people that have got something good as well, and we all just do a little part, and it makes a huge difference. So thank you for taking the time to unpack it. It's it's very kind of you guys.
Phil Friend 56:01
Very enjoyable, really interesting too. Give
Simon Minty 56:03
our best to Genevieve and thank you so much, Henry, especially, staying up so late. We appreciate that. Thank
Henry Smith 56:09
you so much. We'll see you soon.
Announcer 56:11
This is the way we roll, presented by Simon Minty and Phil Friend. You can email us at minty and friend@gmail.com or just search for minty and friend on social media, we're on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, foreign.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai