Strategies, Opportunities and Barriers: Mapping the New World of Work: An Australian Screen Industry Roundtable Summary Report: Western Sydney University, Parramatta City Campus, 8 February 2018

Leading, managing, and working in the screen industries is complex and dynamic. The screen industries play a significant role in Australia's cultural ecology. They help to shape, connect and support small organisations and freelancers that make up the workforce and its cultural vibrancy. Educational and training institutions also provide a 'talent pipeline' to sustain the sector. However, Australia's screen industries face significant challenges particularly regarding issues surrounding labour processes, for example, and the differential experiences of women and men and people of diverse backgrounds and abilities who work in the sector. The fragmented nature of production, intense competition, and a precarious work culture and partial work regulation are just some of the work-related dimensions that impact on the creative process and outputs. More recently, with high profile instances of gendered workplace harassment and assault allegations, (in)equality and diversity have taken center stage in the screen and media industries in Australia and internationally. These are of concern with implications for well-being, policy and public health. Whether it is the 'Australian Weinstein' allegations flooding the media, the gender pay gap, the absence of women screen directors, the ongoing presence of the casting couch, the strikingly different experiences of women and men have never been vocalised more. At the same time, there is increasing discontent about the persistent 'whiteness' of the screen industries, not least since the controversy around the lack of any non-white nominations for the Academy Awards in 2016. The solutions to these issues, ways to shape outcomes, and the canvassing of research-based approaches, were framed by a set of questions that provided a focus for a half-day Australian Screen Industry Roundtable hosted by the School of Business and Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University and jointly partnered with the School of Creative Industries at the University of South Australia.