The British Film Institute’s Film Audience Network (BFI FAN) has unveiled Spotlight, a programme to invest in what it has identified as “culturally underserved communities”.
Spotlight will see additional BFI National Lottery funding invested in eight local areas across the UK to boost audience choice and improve access to screenings of independent film.
For BFI FAN 2023-2026, the BFI ringfenced £1.85m National Lottery funding for Spotlight. It takes a hyper-local approach to developing screenings in eight areas, each identified as having little or no screening provision by their local BFI FAN film hubs.
The Spotlight areas and partners set to receive support are:
- Film Hub London: Barking and Dagenham, and Newham
- Film Hub Midlands: Stoke on Trent and Stafford, in partnership with Flatpack Festival
- Film Hub Northern Ireland: Newry & Mourne, in partnership with Newcastle Community Cinema
- Film Hub North: Sunderland, in partnership with Sunderland Shorts Film Festival
- Film Hub Scotland: Moray Firth area, in partnership with Eden Court, Inverness
- Film Hub South East: Peterborough, in partnership with the Gateway Film Festival
- Film Hub South West: Swindon, in partnership with Create Studios
- Film Hub Wales: Rural Conwy, in partnership with TAPE, Community Music and Film
The projects will be delivered over three years, in many cases operating in partnership with locally based film organisations, with an end goal of establishing audiences and screening activities that can be sustained and continue once this targeted support ends.
In addition, each of the eight FAN hubs now has funding available, totalling around £750,000 between the eight hubs per year for the next three years, to support a wide range of exhibition activity across the UK. The eight hubs and their lead organisations that administer funding are: Film Hub London (Film London); Film Hub Midlands (Broadway); Film Hub North (Showroom Workstation and HOME); Film Hub Northern Ireland (Queen’s Film Theatre); Film Hub Scotland (Glasgow Film); Film Hub South East (Independent Cinema Office); Film Hub South West (Watershed); Film Hub Wales (Chapter Arts Centre).
Also rolling out in 2024 are a series of BFI FAN skills and development initiatives intended to provide hub members with access to training and learning opportunities. These include ’Reach: Strategic Audience Development’ training which has been created by the Independent Cinema Office and has run for four previous editions. This is soon to be followed by a new course – ’Revisiting Your Cinema Business Model’ – intended to address the pressing need for greater financial and commercial knowledge within cinemas across the UK.
A regular programme of online webinars is also being offered to FAN members across the UK, and later this year will also see the launch of a new BFI FAN Conference, bringing member organisations together to share best practice in reaching audiences.
Ben Luxford, BFI’s director of UK audiences, said: “The aim of BFI FAN has always been to open up access and opportunity for everyone across the UK to be able to discover and watch a rich variety of UK and international indie film. Given the ongoing challenges the exhibition sector is facing, the value of FAN, particularly the financial support and training it offers, is more vital than ever. The latest FAN evaluation outlines where it has had a positive impact and helped us set the roadmap for this latest iteration – it tells us that having a connected national network which has a localised approach is key to its success.
“In introducing Spotlight we want to encourage ultra-local audience development, focussing on a specific area that is underserved and enable the Hubs to take action to improve the offer and engage the local community. As well as benefit to those audiences, we also hope the whole of FAN will gather learnings to make longer-term impact.”
These initiatives come as BFI FAN publishes a report, carried out by UK cultural sector consultancy Indigo, that aims to showcase the success of its decentralised funding model. The report found that £8m investment support over 2,428 projects added an estimated value of at least £21.2m to the economy.
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