Posted by bridget.beale

On Wednesday 13 July BIMA held the 2016 BIMA Awards judging day – and with it launched the UK’s first ever creative shadow jury. A group of six up-and-coming talented creative women had the chance to shadow some of the leading senior digital thinkers and leaders in the UK.

The creation of a shadow jury is the first of its kind in the UK and allows the ‘jurors of the future’ to gain valuable insights into how work is judged, experience a jury room in action and see how their scores for the work compare.

Bridget Beale, MD of BIMA said, ‘Our partnership with Creative Equals has enabled us to bring an opportunity to open the doors to the BIMA Awards judging for the first time. We believe this concept is an industry first. We hope to create the jurors of the future.’

The BIMA Awards 2016 Shadow Jury
– Cris Mascort, Design Director at RG/A
– Rebecca Rumble, Senior Editor and Motion Designer at RG/A
– Julie Herskin, Creative at AnalogFolk
– Ros Horner, Design Director at Wunderman
– Jasmine Hays, Design Director at DigitasLBi
– Maria Maturana, Art Director at AKQA

Creative Equals is the gender diversity kitemark of the creative industry. Their aim is to provide more pathways to success for female creatives by working with directly with industry, recruitment, and agencies.
Over 2016, their ambition is to train, sponsor and champion female creative talent in agencies all the way to leadership roles – and onto judging juries.

We believe – in 2016 – all juries should be evenly split so work is fairly evaluated

‘BIMA was the first organisation to sign up to our awards charter, which includes 50/50 juries, a policy they have championed in 2016,’ says Ali Hanan, founder of Creative Equals. ‘We believe – in 2016 – all juries should be evenly split so work is fairly evaluated. However, one of the challenges we hear is because there are so few women in top leadership roles, they have huge demands on their time. Creative Equals asks juries to take women from the ‘rung below’. One of the aims of a shadow jury is, these female talents will be able to put the experience on their CV and become known in judging circles.

Our first ‘shadows’ come from Creative Equals’ signed agencies, Wunderman, DigitasLBi, AnalogFolk and R/GA.