Priming the Creative Pipeline
A Fujifilm partnership created a blueprint for diversifying creative industries in Seattle
Investing in Diversity
After a hiring search, Tony Fulgham and his team at All Is Well – a small video production company in Seattle – were both amazed and disappointed at the lack of diversity in the pool of applicants. The qualified responders were overwhelmingly white and male. Tony, age 55, who is also white and male, wants to be part of a creative team who are not all like him. “It is just a richer work experience when you have different points of view,” he remarks.
Tony and his team were frustrated by the lack of diversity among the applicants, and wondered what they could do differently. “Unscientifically, I would say 30% of the problem was that we didn’t have an outreach partner to get out into communities our little bubble has been separate from,” Tony reflects. But, beyond outreach and recruitment, there was a deeper pattern at play. “I thought about what the industry looked like here in Seattle ten years ago,” he adds, “and it was largely white and male.”
Professional creative experience does not emerge overnight. It takes time, investment, and connections to build up a sustainable creative life. The folks at All Is Well realized that, if they wanted to hire experienced local writers, directors, and art directors from diverse backgrounds ten years from now, they could play a part in training and encouraging the next generation of creatives today. So they took the long view, starting with a short internship, knowing it might take several years and multiple factors to build up a more robust, diverse creative community.
Empowering Communities
Meanwhile, the Africatown Community Land Trust, a nonprofit devoted to empowering and preserving the Black community in Seattle, was in the process of transforming an abandoned firehouse into the William Grose Center for Cultural Innovation to serve as a local hub for training and innovation. Named after William Grose, an African American pioneer and entrepreneur, the center is inspiring new leaders by connecting young people to opportunities in technology, giving them the skills to prepare for a successful future.
With support from Fujifilm, the team at All Is Well partnered with the William Grose Center to pilot six paid internships for young aspiring filmmakers. Over the course of 12 months, three pairs of interns worked for three months each with a three-month break in the middle.
Tony is now writing a guidebook for future internships with other local creative companies. The success of these first six is serving as a blueprint for other local businesses to recruit young creatives in what the William Grose Center is calling the Seattle Creative Pipeline. By connecting local business with local talent, these internships will meet the needs of both young people seeking growth opportunities and businesses wanting to diversify. Aaron Jin, Gemma Cross, Markel Tomaras, Luz Tovar, Eric Fortson, and Nura Ahmed were the first six interns in the program.
Experiencing Growth
Tony recognized that the internship was not only about bringing people in the door, but using the time wisely to help them hone their strengths. “There was a steep learning curve for me, learning how to teach people to find their voice as opposed to giving them mine,” he observes.
As Tony is working on writing down what he learned in leading the internship, he is reflecting not only on the who and the how, but also the why. “The important question any agency should ask themselves before deciding to start a creative diversity, equity, and inclusion program is: why are you doing it?” Tony states. “And once you ask yourself why you’re doing it, if you’re honest with yourself, you can find the right people to make sure it’s a positive experience for everybody involved.”
Someone who certainly enhanced the overall experience was Winfield Ezell, a local African American filmmaker who is serving as internship coordinator for the William Grose Center. Winfield was inspired to make films after watching Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, and the same creative’s books on craft helped him find his footing. But he knows he would have benefited from the kind of direct mentorship and hands-on experience this internship offers. Winfield helped shape the program into the training his younger self would have loved.
“Fujifilm, in donating those cameras, put us in a position to give them real, practical, hands-on experience with industry-standard equipment. That’s a huge piece,” Winfield beams. The other piece it offered was a sense of community with peers. When Winfield started making films in Seattle during the nineties, he found a collective of independent creatives who shared resources and helped him feel supported. Even so, he was often the only person of color on set for projects.
One of Winfield’s deepest hopes for this internship – and future Seattle Creative Pipeline internships – is that they become sustainable. “It’s one thing to rush it so that we can get the optics of ‘hey, man, we’re doing this!’, but it’s another to make sure we’re rock solid. It’s an easy sell these days for somebody to just check their diversity, equity, and inclusion box,” Winfield adds. “But to truly say ‘we want this to be from now on’ is not only very important to me, but to the leadership over at Africatown Land Trust and William Grose.” Winfield is excited to see the ways this internship can create a means for participants who sincerely want to thrive in this industry to “at least have a stake in it, or a chance at a stake in it.”
Excitement for the Future
Although creating these internships was a significant investment of time and energy, Tony’s face lit up when talking about what it meant to him and the team at All Is Well. “My creativity is better, and my team’s creativity is better,” Tony reflects. “I wanted diversity in my workforce because it makes all our work better.”
Some of the interns have continued to work with All Is Well, and Tony is excited to see where their creative careers are headed.
“That pilot program showed us not only that there was a need – we knew that – but that this option was viable,” Winfield adds.
“All you need is not to feel like you have to jump over a gate,” Tony concludes, recognizing how empowering it is not to be held back by intentional or unintentional gatekeeping. “You can just walk through the gate.”
Meet the interns within this series’ subsequent articles. Learn more about the Seattle Creative Pipeline by visiting the website here.
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