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by Caroline_Norbury on 27-Jul-09 12:59

The new Chairman of the UK Film Council, Tim Bevan, visited Bristol for a whistle-stop tour on Friday. He was accompanied by three other members of the UKFC board – Amanda Walsh, Pippa Cross and Rebecca O’Brien as well as UKFC CEO John Woodward and Head of UK Partnerships, Tim Cagney.

The party began their visit at Knowle West Media Centre, which John and Tim had visited two years previously. Obviously much has changed since their first visit and the group were incredibly impressed at the result of KWMC’s hard work in building their wonderful new centre. Whilst there we met with a number of young people working on music scores, digital animation and photography as well as meeting the very impressive filmmaker, Michael Smith. After a visit to Aardman - who coincidentally have also moved into a brand new building – the group visited Watershed to watch a number of clips by local filmmakers, meet some of them and also talk to a couple of people involved in exhibition and festival activity.

The purpose of the visit was to give an idea of how UKFC investment is used in the region as the new board begin their deliberations on re-positioning the UK Film Council in the coming years.  Public investment as we all know is getting tighter and next year will see a real reduction in the UKFC’s budget as Lottery money is skewed towards Olympic activity. There will be tough times ahead and hard choices for the UKFC and other cultural organisations to make in terms of what interventions will deliver the impact they believe to be useful for the sector. South West Screen’s mission has always been to ensure the cultural and the commercial do not become separated by public sector red tape and this is the message we relayed again to our visitors. We also sought to persuade them – through relevant examples - that the best way of making decisions on sector investment is at the local rather than the national level and that the opportunity to enjoy, experience and work in the creative media should be open to everyone and not just a small section of the South East.

There was a lot of ground to cover in just one day, but I hope we gave the Film Council a flavour of the work their money funds here. Our thanks goes to everyone who came along to bang the drum for Film Council support of the Regional Screen Agencies and we hope that the visit pays dividends in terms of ongoing support.

Tagged:UK Film Council, Caroline Norbury, Knowle West Media Centre, Aardman, Watershed

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