How The Inevitable Foundation is fighting for the inclusion of disability in Hollywood

The Inevitable Foundation calls on Hollywood to be more inclusive of creatives with disabilities, a society that is often overlooked at work and bypasses diversity research and conversation. People with disabilities make up more than 20% of the population, but less than 1% of representation in cinema and television.

Founded in 2021 by Ritchie Siegel and Marisa Torrell-Pedewski, the nonprofit organization was originally created to support writers with mid-career disabilities. But when they started talking to groups involved in an inclusive space of diversity and equality and to Hollywood executives, they faced challenges.

“We had this dual mission when we started: to finance and train mid-career writers with disabilities and increase the number of characters on screen. This second part turned out to be really problematic because we were talking to executives and other people and they were like, “Oh, ok, I’ll call you when the disabled roles show up.” No one will call us, Ziegler shared Starz’s first #TakeTheLead Summit Thursday night in Los Angeles.

He continued: “And we started to realize that by focusing on the screen and beyond, I was throwing pigeons at the locker we care so much about, so we left the screen on a mission and focused on the workforce – no one ever had any. One: Once again this resistance has arisen … they are excellent writers, first and foremost they are disabled writers.

The Inevitable Foundation recently launched The Cost of Housing A report that examines all the barriers that people with talented disabilities face when trying to get the housing they need.

The report found that 30 percent of people with disabilities had to pay for housing out of their own pockets. These after-tax and post-performance fees will undoubtedly be affected by Talent for the Disabled’s income.

Additionally, the production budget will only increase by 0.033% on average to support a disabled crew member (based on a budget of $ 47 million).

“I think this topic will be very important and central to augmenting this quest to increase the range of disabled staff, workforce and talent,” Siegel said. “We are truly open to any kind of progress that companies think they can achieve where they want to start.”

In response to their findings, Siegel and Torrell-Pedevska have assembled a creative team made up of all creatives with disabilities from 5 different countries to launch a Disability Diversity Campaign to spread the word that there is no diversity without equality or inclusion. .

“The campaign consists of eight or nine guiding questions to encourage the industry to start thinking about how they can play their part,” Siegel said. “Some questions are: Why don’t people with disabilities make up 20 percent of your leadership team?” Why don’t people with disabilities make up 20% of your employee base? Is disability monitoring a metric and are we a tangible diversity account? I think most companies will answer these questions right now. But how do you start building yes? It will take time and reflection ”.

And you don’t have to be a Hollywood CEO to help make space for people with disabilities – anyone can be an ally.

“I’m an ally in this case. “I don’t recognize people with disabilities, so when we look at the industry, if 1% of talent is disabled, 99% can be an ally,” she said. “And this is very important, because the people in power are not people with disabilities at all. It’s just a great opportunity to really empower and support this population that has a great story to tell and a lot to add to the room. These are incredibly creative people, as well as considering that they live in a world that was not created for them to thrive. So the whole sector can be mostly allies and we are excited about it. “