The BFI National Lottery Innovation Challenge Fund is investing £650,000 in two programmes aimed at supporting UK independent creatives with the use of new technologies including AI and virtual production.
The BFI has awarded £400,000 to the National Film and Television School (NFTS) and £250,000 to Falmouth University to deliver projects over a two-year period.
NFTS has been tasked with delivering the NFTS x BFI Innovators Programme. Aimed at reaching a large number of creatives, the programme will combine sector consultation and research and skills development as well as supporting a cohort of 10 practitioners with funded creative R&D projects.
Falmouth University will develop a programme called ’Lab to slate: unlocking AI for the UK’s independent screen sector’, focused specifically on the practical application of AI within screen production. Eight independent creatives will receive structured training, access to tools, legal guidance and ethical frameworks, applying AI within real creative projects and generating evidence about its potential role in development and production workflows.
The findings from both projects will be published in a bid to make the information widely accessible to the UK independent film sector.
The Innovation Challenge fund has £2.6m available across multiple challenges over three years, as part of the BFI National Lottery Funding Plan 2026-2029.
Between 2024 and 2026, up to £1.8m has already been distributed to amongst others, the video games industry, AI for screen archives, and equality, diversity and inclusion data collection for film production.
“Recent research indicates that as many as 30% of independent producers are already using AI as central to helping them make films, but the technology is often poorly understood. This funding sets out vital R&D to ensure that the independent film sector is informed and provided with the insight, confidence and skills to utilise these technologies safely and ethically,” said Rishi Coupland, BFI’s executive director of industry development and innovation.
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