The brand new service will support the implementation of healthy working practices as part of the body’s Let’s Reset campaign

On Tuesday 15 March, the London-based Film and TV Charity launched The Whole Picture Toolkit: For Mentally Healthy Productions. The new toolkit is a free website created by the organisation in cooperation with industry partners and bodies, mental health experts and other practitioners.

The launch of the tool is part of Let’s Reset, a behaviour change campaign aimed to redefine working culture in the audiovisual industry. The portal will give anyone working in production the information they may need to improve working environments and the sector’s wider approach to mental health. The toolkit follows the charity’s launch of the Mental Health Training: Guidance for Employers framework in partnership with ScreenSkills at the beginning of the year.

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The portal can be used in its entirety or in individual sections. It provides several mini-guides for all the three main stages of filmmaking: pre-production, production and post-production. For example, the pre-production mini-guides include actions to agree on a well-being plan, to build fair and transparent recruitment processes and to find clarity about the definitions of bullying, racism, harassment and discrimination. Other mini-guides provide best practices to support a team’s training needs, to plan rest and time off as well as to debrief senior leaders.

Commenting on the launch of the toolkit, Alex Pumfrey, CEO at The Film and TV Charity, said: “Our recent release of Looking Glass ’21 shows that there is still a long way to go to improve the industry’s mental health, but The Whole Picture Toolkit represents a pivotal moment on that journey. Those who adopt the Toolkit as a whole or in part are immediately grasping the challenge of changing behaviours, adopting healthier working practices, and making a real, practical difference. Now, we want to see the Toolkit put to work and hope to reach the milestone of 100 productions doing so by the end of 2022, each one of them sending a vital message to people working behind the scenes – only 10 percent of whom currently believe the industry is a mentally healthy place to work.”

Next, Seetha Kumar, Chief Executive at ScreenSkills, added: “I think what’s been absolutely brilliant is the power of collaboration, the power of partnership, the power of acknowledging, yes, there is a problem. And we’ve acknowledged this problem, and we are all collectively working together to try and do something about it.”

The Whole Picture Toolkit is supported by the charity’s own Mental Health Task Force, comprising senior leaders from Amazon, Banijay, BBC, BBC Studios, BFI, Channel 4, Disney, IMG, ITV Studios, Sky, Sky Studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia. It has been developed with the support of organisations such as Apple, Leopard Pictures, Mini Productions, Offspring, See-Saw Films and many more. 

You can access the portal here.