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Within a year of cancelling the popular, educational, anti-racist African Odysseys film programme to 'cut costs' (while refusing to tell the community what the costs for African Odysseys were)  the British Film Institute has given  £230,000.00 to Creative Diversity Network and Design Otherwise CIC to 'find out about diversity'. This is from the same BFI  that has refused to give diversity statistics about staff at BFI's Sight and Sound magazine for over a year. Here are four of the eight questions that 17,500 people would like answered:

• What is the racial composition of BFI’s Sight & Sound staff by rank and length of service?
• Why has Sight & Sound excluded African Odysseys for 17 years despite its significance?
• Was ‘What If’ informed about the Steering Committee the 2020 and 2023 complaints of racial discrimination to CEO Ben Roberts when they were involved with diversity training of BFI staff?
• Who decided not to conduct a Race Equality Impact Assessment, and what are their qualifications? When was that decision made? All 8 questions are listed HERE

The image above is from the BFI's Linkedin page dated October 28 2025. The announcement has quotes from Director of Research Rishi Coupland. Here is an extract:

The BFI National Lottery Innovation Challenge Fund is awarding £200,000 to the Creative Diversity Network (CDN) and £30,000 Design Otherwise CIC to address the longstanding challenge of collecting robust diversity data for the UK’s film production workforce. The funding enables research, consultation with industry and the testing of new technology to establish effective ways to collect and report diversity data. This will provide a clearer demographic picture of the sector and help drive transformative change to build a more diverse and inclusive industry. 

'We set this challenge as the film production industry has encountered a number of barriers to developing a coherent, industry-wide and systemic approach for collecting diversity data,' says Rishi Coupland, BFI Director of Research and Industry Innovation. 'The BFI’s innovation funding will allow for essential R&D to make a lasting change in this area. We were impressed with the approaches of both CDN and Design Otherwise CIC towards building a more inclusive industry.'

This is the same BFI that has refused to answer 8 simple questions on diversity, that just last year had to apologise to Faisal Querishi about how they handled his race complaint  HERE so how are they giving money to outside bodies to ask questions on racial representation?

Rishi Coupland is part of an 88% white executive team and there are no Black governors on the 15 strong board of governors chaired by Jay Hunt.

In 2024 senior manager Stuart Brown stated that David Somerset ( the curator of the most successful and longest running Black film programme the BFI had ever seen) must be made redundant and his post must be deleted, in order to 'promote diversity and cut costs' . This automatically meant the cancellation of the almost 20-year-old,  film series which regularly sold out the BFI's 450 seat cinema.

To this day, BFI CEO Ben Roberts has refused to tell the 17,500 petition supporters of African Odysseys HERE the budget for African Odysseys. Therefore this £230, 000.00 jackpot to fund surveys is shocking, especially as the BFI refused to fund a legally required Race Equality Impact Assessment survey to assess the impact of the loss of African Odysseys. This decision was supported by Director of People Vilma Nickolaidou.

Additionally the BFI has just advertised with Creative Access for two roles at BFI Flare for Press Assistant and Guest Assistant totalling £63,108.00 of salary. Flare has at least 8 staff.

African Odysseys had only one staff member, Somerset, who was made redundant to 'save money'. African Odysseys never had a Press or Guest assistant, those roles were performed by volunteers since 2007 saving the BFI hundreds of thousands of pounds.

No one at the BFI has been able to explain these massive discrepancies. BFI Flare carries on with its screenings supported by 8 staff while the single person who made African Odysseys possible at the BFI , the only person with 20 years experience of Black film, was removed and his post destroyed without any consultation of the massive, loyal audience built up monthly by grassroots volunteers since 2007.

Stuart Brown at a face-to-face meeting with the African Odysseys Steering Group on 29th August 2023 committed the BFI to a 20th anniversary celebratory season of African Odysseys in 2026. A celebration that was impossible if BFI chose, against the wishes of tens of thousands of people, to make Somerset, the co-founder of African Odysseys, redundant in 2025.

The educational. ant-racist film Injustice with Janet Alder on Friday 5th December HERE is exactly the type of grassroots film, African Odysseys would programme at the BFI. In fact, AO programmed an entire season of films on deaths in custody at the BFI with families in attendance with Janet Alder and Ken Fero on stage.

The fact that BFI ended the African Odysseys programme, despite the wishes of 17,500 people and refused to answer those 8 simple questions , shows they don't want such films at their venue and have no respect for the global majority they say they 'wish to work with' or do diversity surveys about.

African Odysseys will continue to show films throughout 2026 for its 20th anniversary despite the attacks on its existence. In this climate of increased street and institutional racism, you can help fight for equality by attending these events, sharing and signing the petition.