Monday, September 21, 2015

Newsround Blog is hoping to soon find out more about diversity on BBC children's TV. We understand that 26% of portrayal on CBBC & CBeebies are of diverse characters, but that doesn't help with questions like how many are, for example, black or gay.

Diversity was central to one of CBBC Newsround's reports this morning. A leading African-American ballet dancer, Misty Copeland, says she's worried there aren't more black dancers around the world. Ayshah visited the Royal Ballet in London to talk to Eric Underwood, one of their few black dancers. The programme's researchers contacted some of Britain's top ballet schools. It seems that only about 18 out of 332 dancers are black.

Another excellent Newsround diversity-related report was based on the efforts of a 14-year-old boy called Frankie, who has a disability -

Frankie: I think if we involve disabled people with books, we can raise awareness and it will become the norm to people, and they won't stare, they won't make comments and life would get better - society would get better.

Martin Dougan: What would you want to see in future, in terms of what you've done and what you want to achieve?

Frankie: That the world's a better place, and there's equal rights between people ... yeah.

Martin: Frankie is extremely passionate about this. He really wants to make changes.

Frankie and Martin Dougan visited book publishing company, Bloomsbury, to talk their head of children’s and educational publishing, Emma Hopkin. Ms Hopkin said the publishing industry is working very hard to ensure that everybody is represented in some way in some books.

The Guardian - Schoolboy calls for more disabled characters in children's books

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