"The MyWorld/Digital Catapult funding is crucial, as it is enabling the Gritty team to take the first step in developing and testing generative AI to deliver talent and inclusion activities. Support from MyWorld/Digital Catapult is a unique opportunity for us to receive wrap-around support to grow our capabilities in the ethical and efficient deployment of AI, while also being part of a cohort who can learn from and amplify each other."
Mel Rodrigues, Gritty Talent Founder

Organisation details 

Gritty Talent is an impact-driven talent and technology company, delivering meaningful representation and inclusion in the UK’s creative, cultural and digital sectors.

Project details

Creative talent is the lifeblood of every single production, project or piece of content ever made. Companies require a constant and plentiful supply of (often freelance) talent in regional bases around the UK in order to originate ideas, drive innovation, deliver specialist projects and connect to national/global audiences. However, analysis of 1.1 million UK TV productions shows poor representation of disabled and ethnically diverse talent particularly in senior and craft roles. Women are leaving the workforce in high numbers and absent from senior and technical roles (Creative Diversity Network_2023). In tandem, the creative sector is rapidly adopting generative AI in its content creation activities; however it has not yet deployed AI in decision-making in its most crucial business activity: the acquisition/progression of a skilled and diverse workforce.

To address the sector challenge, over the past three years Gritty Talent has conducted significant market research and R&D to investigate if a smart, scalable solution to the talent pipeline challenges is viable. As a result, they have built a ‘semi automated’ tool – the ‘Inclusion Accelerator’ which assesses EDI and talent data in order to generate bespoke recommendations and measure onward impact. This project is the first stage in exploring how to practically, ethically and robustly deploy ChatGPT within their workflow to address the talent challenge, and ultimately deliver a step-change in how the creative and digital sector sources, develops and up-skills its most precious resource: people.