Tara Judah

“To stay at the forefront of screen culture, we’ll embrace change and evolve as a resilient, sustainable, digital-first and diverse organisation with a plurality of voices.”^[i] – Ben Roberts, BFI Screen Culture/2033

An inherent fluctuation in public spend means UK National Lottery funding is not a constant, fixed amount. As such, the British Film Institute (BFI) strategizes and supports specific, time-limited projects. While this allows a degree of responsiveness, it also creates a culture of constantly shifting sands. The current ten-year plan, Screen Culture /2033, which launched last year, marks a further turn away from the programming and “specialised film” focus that defined BFI Film Forever (2012-2017), and diverges from the audience-facing BFI Audience Fund (2017-2023), which focused on “national reach” and “significant cultural ambition”.^[ii]

The implications of this new strategy for members of the Film Audience Network (FAN) were discussed and debated at the industry’s new network conference, BFI FAN CON.^[iii] The conference became a forum for the aforementioned plurality of voices, who are working in myriad ways and with varying degrees of success. Though film exhibitors aren’t actively working with Sherry Arnstein’s influential A Ladder of Citizen Participation^[iv], it loomed large over the conference, a potential beacon amidst the impacts of austerity, Brexit, Covid, economic, environmental and other contemporary crises.

BFI Screen Culture /2033 includes a new programme aimed at investing in what it has identified as “culturally underserved communities”. The SPOTLIGHT programme, which receives £1.85m in funding, sets up cultural partnerships in eight locations (one per regional film hub).^[i] The example presented was from Film Hub South East. Having identified Peterborough, Film Hub South East engaged Gateway Film Festival as the partner organisation. The challenge for Gateway is fittingly illustrated by Arnstein’s Ladder. Gateway spoke about “co-creation”, and their learnings: that it is “an ongoing process” and that “you have to spend some time there.” Meaningful co-creation requires more than a parachute landing. 

Leigh Film Society’s launch of Leigh Film Factory is an inverse example, of grass roots community activism. Following the film society’s successful pop-up film events, Leigh Film Factory was imagined and built: a dedicated cinema space to hold both films and community. With donations, volunteers, and hard work, they did it. Having transformed a small space into a functional cinema, the offering is truly community minded: by the community for the community, and with pay what you can screenings for families. Ladder wise, this is true Citizen Control, but there are other challenges to overcome. For example, the cinema needs to upgrade its digital projection equipment to become DCP (Digital Cinema Package) compatible to access a wider catalogue of both new and classic films. This, however, is an expensive endeavour, commerce beyond community. Despite the millions of pounds of National Lottery funding funnelled through the BFI and its respective regional film hubs, there is currently no provision for capital (BFI National Lottery funds cannot be used for bottom line expenses such as buildings, equipment and staff costs). Subsequently, Leigh Film Factory have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise £40,000 for their cause.^[ii] This begs the question: where is the co-creation to keep “culturally underserved communities” standing tall on the top rung? 

A session titled ‘The Health and Wellbeing Benefits of Attending the Cinema’ foregrounded the work being done by MediCinema, physical cinemas that operate inside NHS hospitals, allowing patients (and their families) to watch films in comfort – including in wheelchairs, hospital beds, connected to IVs, etc. – and with medical professionals on hand. The speakers gave examples that included a three-year-old terminal cancer patient who had their first cinema experience thanks to the initiative. All about enabling patients – who often suffer social and cultural isolation – a way to connect to community, hundreds of patients are literally being prescribed cinema. 

AHRC funded, and with the intention of assisting the cultural sector in using failure as a tool for positive change (a counter point to the “appreciative inquiry” used by many cultural institutions), FailSpace is an initiative with huge potential.^[iii] Embracing the concept of “Working Better Together” through acknowledging failures of partnership, FailSpace enables a more productive evaluation process. Accepting failure as a part of the process of co-creation means that partners can move up the ladder, each iteration being part of a reflective practice on what didn’t work and why. Furthermore, instead of focusing on reporting positively to a funder (BFI) about “bums on seats” (numbers as success), FailSpace allows and enables cultural workers to reflect and focus on the meaningful nature of the experience, which is arguably the point of cultural work in the first place.  

An instant take-away from BFI FAN CON is that there is a plurality of voices in the sector, but if we want to move from a participatory rung to citizen control, we might question the sustainability of spotlighting and project-based funds. Could capital investment better assist communities in climbing Arnstein’s Ladder? Perhaps FAN can create a FailSpace to evaluate.

Author bio

Tara Judah is a doctoral researcher at the University of the West of England, researching the role of independent cinema in the age of on-demand culture. Tara is also an editor at Senses of Cinema, MUBI and Europa Cinemas, and has worked as a film critic for over a decade, with bylines at Sight & Sound, Screen Daily and The Bigger Picture.

^[i] SPOTLIGHT programme announced by BFI Film Audience Network to invest in culturally underserved communities, BFI, 13 March 2024, [https://www.bfi.org.uk/news/spotlight-programme-bfi-film-audience-network-invest-culturally-underserved-communities]

^[ii] Leigh Film Society, Just Giving, [https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/leighfilm] accessed November 6 2024

^[iii] “Appreciative inquiry” is a social constructionist approach to ideation, using examples of an institution’s successes to imagine what could be. 

^[i] Ben Roberts, BFI Screen Culture/2033: Our ten-year strategy, BFI, 2024, [https://blog.bfi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/BFI-Screen-Culture-2033_Ten-Year-Strategy.pdf] accessed October 21 2024.

^[ii] BFI Audience Fund, BFI, [https://www2.bfi.org.uk/supporting-uk-film/distribution-exhibition-funding/bfi-audience-fund] accessed October 21, 2024

^[iii] BFI FAN CON, led by London-based programming and training organisation Independent Cinema Office (ICO) replaces This Way Up, an annual film exhibitor conference organised by Film Hub Scotland and Film Hub North.

^[iv] Sherry Arnstein, A Ladder of Citizen Participation, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Volume 35, 1969 – Issue 4.