Roger Shannon: Vital regional support for film must continue
Jul 28 2010 By Roger Shannon
The UKFC’s annual contribution significantly underpinned the robust growth of these agencies; and allowed for a wider engagement with more partners - for example, Advantage West Midlands - keen to participate in a growing and bustling regional film economy.
The stark issue now facing such regional screen agencies is that the two main funding pillars that held aloft this screen industry edifice have now - Samson like - been pushed aside by the Coalition’s cull : AWM and UKFC, now both binned.
As there is no road map yet laid out for the industry post the UKFC - though it does seem that the Lottery Film Fund will continue - there is similarly no regional road map; and how could there be?
Expectations at the very end of last week were that the UKFC would still be funding Screen WM in the coming years, albeit at a recession recalibrated level, and that future arrangements would be worked out with the public/private bodies - the local enterprise partnerships - that will replace the regional development agency AWM.
It’s vital for the region’s film culture and film economy - and also for the wider health of the region’s creative industries - that a new architecture of screen funding is put in place at the earliest opportunity, so that the gains achieved for the region by Screen WM/UKFC/AWM in recent years are not lost.
No doubt this process will have to take in the competing demands thrown up by the LEP’s priorities, and the prospect of there being a number of LEPs across the span of the old AWM terrain, while at the same time it will be important to take stock of the digital future of the screen industries, as well as the type of film production/making that is considered most appropriate to pursue in this region in a climate of austerity.
It is only in recent years that the film culture/economy of Birmingham and the West Midlands has been able to contribute to and benefit, visibly, frequently, positively, from a direct participation with the UK ‘s vibrant film industry.
The means by which the region can continue to do so relies on an at times fragile pattern of partnerships, the like of which has only been in existence for a limited number of years.
It’s not that long ago that the only funds available to film makers were tiny grants from regional arts boards; since then, it’s always been a struggle to establish film making and film producing as an integral, and potentially beneficial, part of the region’s wider creative economy.
For me, as an active partisan for regional film for the past three decades, it’s vital that regional film support be secured swiftly in the coming months, so that the continuity of Screen WM’s good practice is ensured via new funding partnerships, a new generation of creative film makers from this region is brought into the light, and the region participate fully in the bigger picture.
* A personal view from Birmingham based Executive Producer and Professor, Roger Shannon, who has Executive Produced films for both the UK Film Council, Lawless Heart, and Screen WM, The Gloaming, and Made In Birmingham.
