TV Collective amps up Breakthrough Leaders with one-day festival

The TV Collective has unveiled its 53 Breakthrough Leaders 2023 – and revealed plans to assemble creatives from Black, Asian and ethnic backgrounds for a one-day networking event in the autumn.

This year’s cohort, the third in the collective’s annual initiative to mentor and career guidance to mid-level industry figures from a diverse background with eight or more years experience.

More than half of this year's cohort are TM members including Laura Spence, producer of BBC2 doc series The Elon Musk Show;  Deena Rahman, a series producer of ITV entertainment shows Starstruck and Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway; Michas Vanni, a producer/director on UKTV's Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over; Errol Ettienne, series director on Sky Max's Behind the Game; and Nutopia head of development Samantha Fernandes.

Run by TVC with Fremantle, Indigo Talent and Remy Blumenfeld's Vitality Guru, the scheme invites peers to nominate creatives as future industry leaders and to date has paired 154 individuals with 100 mentors.

TVC is inviting all of this year's cohort to partake in this autumn's inaugural Breakthrough Leaders Visionary’Festival of masterclasses, panel debates and networking, joining the likes of writer Afua Hirsch, musical director Siddiq Babz Bey, director and producer Femi Oyeniran and Junior Okoli and Chas Appeti, the creators of Amazon Prime Video series Jungle.

TVC founder Simone Pennant said: “As we know, talent of colour is often overlooked, with recruiters citing that they can’t find them or don’t have the right experience as an excuse.

“We have seen people go from series producer to executives to heads of departments and even our first director of content. And as I say every year - the quality of talent of this programme speaks to the abundance of talent of colour that already exists but is often underutilised within our industry.”

A TVC survey of last year's cohorts found that 78% believed being a Breakthrough Leader has helped raise their profile, 87% said being a leader has progressed their career, and 100% said the programme has improved their confidence.

For a full list and profiles of this year's 53 participants, click here