Producing The Quiet Revolution
The goal in most of my work is almost always to be invisible. To be the ultimate "supporting act." To be in the room, but not in the way. I find myself saying the words, “just pretend I’m not here,” all the time. Because in audio documentary, the best tape always happens the exact second someone stops performing and starts being real.
But over the last few months, pretending not to be in the room became incredibly difficult. The rooms I was standing in were hosting some of the most profound, vulnerable, and high-stakes conversations I’ve ever had the privilege to capture.
This year, Fieldwork was commissioned by brap, an incredible equalities charity led by CEO Joy Warmington, to write, edit, and produce The Quiet Revolution.
Moving Past the Toolkits
The Quiet Revolution is a five-part series that asks a difficult question: what happens when organisations stop outsourcing their anti-racism ambitions and start living them?
For over 25 years, Joy and the brap team have been working at the heart of systemic equity challenges. They don't just hand out toolkits, tick-boxes, or "zero tolerance" statements. They get into the messy, human friction of what it actually takes to dismantle racialised thinking.
My job was to document that reality.
The Rooms We Entered
We went behind closed doors across the NHS and the charity sector to capture the sound of people trying to change systems. At The Royal Free London, a Group Chief Executive candidly admitted to feeling like a "fraud" when faced with the "huge beast" of systemic racism. At South West London and St. George's Mental Health NHS Trust, the conversations went just as deep, exploring how anti-racism isn't just an HR issue, but a matter of clinical outcomes and detention rates.
Our journey continued into Comic Relief and UNICEF UK, where Global Majority staff shared the raw exhaustion of being in the "boxing ring" of anti-racism work, alongside the complex dilemma of "white bosses" celebrating progress without dismissing real pain.
To anchor all of this, we traveled home to brap's "engine room" in Birmingham, spending a day with Joy, Cheryl Garvey, and Lakshnie Hettihewa to unpack the six core principles that actually guide this profound organisational change.
The Privilege of Listening
In storytelling, we often look for the "gleaming details" that tell you everything you need to know about a room. For me, it was Joy greeting me with a bacon roll and providing homemade soup for lunch. That wasn't just hospitality; the care the brap team put into hosting me is the exact same care and psychological safety I’ve seen them bring to the leaders they work with. They act as conveners for some of the trickiest challenges of our times, holding the space so these conversations can go exactly where they need to go.
If you are interested in leadership, systemic change, or just want to hear what radical honesty sounds like, I highly recommend giving this series your time.
Listen to The Quiet Revolution - https://podfollow.com/the-quiet-revolution
