Contents
1. About this fund
£1.35 million has been allocated to the Skills Fund for Exhibition and Distribution through to 31 March 2029.
The UK’s exhibition and distribution sectors play a vital role in bringing film and other screen content to audiences. They are under pressure from increased costs, changing audience demand and business sustainability challenges brought about through the post-COVID landscape.
In response to findings from the recent BFI-commissioned Rapid Skills Review for Exhibition and Distribution, we will make a single award of up to £1,350,000 to support the design and delivery of a practical, targeted and interactive leadership and business development training programme. By improving leadership competencies, the fund aims to improve business effectiveness, leading to safer, happier, healthier, more sustainable and inclusive workplaces.
Programme activity must take place between April 2026 and March 2029 and provide the following to help exhibition and distribution leaders improve their business operation:
- strategic business skills
- mentoring
- actionable planning tools
Skills needs
Your programme must respond to findings set out in the Rapid Skills Review for Exhibition and Distribution.
Your programme should consider modular delivery approaches to ensure a breadth of training can be delivered by subject matter experts. Collectively, the modules should form a structured and cohesive programme of training and development activity.
As a minimum, the programme must include training in:
- mixed economy income generation/fundraising, covering income for core operations as well as projects (including capital)
- new distribution models
- digital marketing
- business leadership, including how to establish and promote inclusive workplace cultures and collaborative team dynamics
- financial and business planning
- strategic partnership working
- data analytics
Modules should be developed in a way to support greater join-up between exhibitors and distributors, including opportunities for shared learning, networking, and relationship building, alongside joint-exploration and planning to improve workflows and partnerships. Training must be delivered by subject matter experts. This means that some parts of your programme will be shaped and delivered by specialists that do not have prior experience of exhibition and distribution. You will need to ensure specialists tailor their contribution to the programme to make it accessible and relevant to programme beneficiaries.
Fund aims and priorities
The programme should continue to deliver against the following primary outcomes of the BFI’s National Lottery Strategy:
- People from under-represented groups across the UK can access the support they need to develop their careers and skills (3.2)
- Vital skills for the sector that cannot be delivered by the commercial market are developed (3.4)
- Better support available for small and medium-sized enterprises and independents to develop their businesses (4.1)
In addition, your programme may contribute to the following secondary outcomes:
- Equitable and more visible routes into the sector for people of all ages (3.1)
- Workforce retention is improved by building inclusive, flexible and supportive workplaces (3.3)
- Evidence-based insight and analysis of the screen sector is readily available to all, supporting organisations and driving policymaking (4.3)
All proposed activity must deliver against our three principles for National Lottery funding: Equity, diversity and inclusion; UK-wide; Environmental sustainability.
2. Check if you’re eligible
Your organisation
Your organisation must be:
- legally constituted and centrally managed in the UK as one of the following:
- limited company or partnership registered at Companies House
- community interest company registered at Companies House
- combined or local authority or statutory body
- charity or trust registered with the Charity Commission (including UK universities and colleges)
- operating on a not-for-profit basis or delivering this activity on a not-for-profit basis
Your organisation must be able to demonstrate:
- evidence of delivering similar business development training programmes, at scale
- ability to deliver across the UK
- a track record of working with a range of expert delivery partners to deliver programme activity
- expert knowledge of exhibition and distribution and a track record of engaging with these sectors
3. What you can use funding for
You can apply for an award of up to £1,350,000 over the 26-29 financial year period.
Your programme should be designed to support the inclusive leadership, growth and financial sustainability of exhibition and distribution companies via a modular programme of training and development. Your programme should engage existing and emerging business leaders as participants, targeting the identified skills needs via a cohort-delivery model. Modules must be led by relevant subject matter experts and should have identified learning outcomes attached. While we welcome hybrid approaches to delivery to increase accessibility and engagement, we expect key content to be delivered in-person to maximise peer learning, knowledge sharing and potential coaching elements.
We expect programme delivery to commence from summer 2026 and to support a minimum of two cohorts per year through to the end of March 2029. You should design a continuous programme of activity which may be reviewed and refined annually based on monitoring and evaluation findings. In addition, you should consider whether any elements of your programme will be made freely accessible to the wider sector, for example as online resources.
We expect beneficiaries from exhibition and distribution to be trained and developed together, with additional opportunities for peer networking, relationship building and collaboration, to encourage shared learning and problem solving both during and beyond the programme delivery period. If you intend to separate exhibition and distribution beneficiaries for specific aspects of programme delivery, please tell us where in your programme you intend to do this and why.
You should not apply to this fund to continue delivery of an existing leadership or business development programme; however, you may draw on findings or successful elements of previous programmes to help inform your new programme of activity.
We will work with the successful applicant to define the parameters of the programme, including eligibility and selection criteria for participating beneficiaries, and to ensure that support is given to the sector in compliance with UK subsidy legislation and reaches those who can most benefit.
Business leaders
We expect that eligible participants in the programme will be existing or emerging business leaders, by which we mean anyone in a senior management position who has a role in creating the company’s strategic and operational plans. They will also need to be UK nationals or resident in the UK and employed within the distribution or exhibition sector.
Deliverables
In your application you will need to identify the specific activity you will deliver (your ‘deliverables’) using the funding which will enable you to meet your KPIs. Your deliverables could include:
- interactive training sessions
- mentoring
- events
- professional networking
- digital resources and guidance (such as training packs, online training modules, toolkits)
- case studies and knowledge that can be shared with the sector to help address skills and business growth needs
You should identify online vs in-person deliverables and include indicative direct contact hours per participant in your proposal.
Eligible costs
You can use this funding for project costs such as:
- direct training costs and any associated costs (for example, beneficiary travel, access support costs, technical costs)
- direct programme delivery staff
- programme events
- resource development and dissemination
- research reports
- marketing that is directly related to the promotion of opportunities available through the business development programme
- contribution to core overheads that support the programme (at a reasonable level)
All costs should be at a level to maximise the public benefit and value for money of the fund.
Costs we cannot support
Funds should not substitute or replace existing funding or income that would otherwise be available, or to fund activity at the same scale that can happen without an award.
National Lottery funds are only awarded to applicants that demonstrate need and a clear public benefit from the activity. BFI National Lottery Funding is project-based, time-limited funding, and you should not expect ongoing support beyond the term of any award made.
Examples of common ineligible costs are:
- core costs for day to day running of your organisation not associated with the activity
- staffing costs which are covered by other sources of funding
- costs relating to an extension of ongoing work
- capital expenditure
- filmmaking projects, workshops or other ‘above the line’ training or project development
- costs relating to the exhibition or distribution of a title or for a screening programme
- activity that is already specifically supported by another external source of funding, or easily could be
- proposals that focus on other art-forms such as literature, dance on film, theatre, poetry film, opera or artists’ moving image
- cost incurred prior to an offer of funding from BFI
- promotional or other activity (information stands, printed brochures) which does not support environmental sustainability
- grants or loans to the participating companies
This list is not exhaustive, and we may tell you that other types of activity within your application cannot be supported by a BFI award or ask that you amend specific activities and associated budget allocations.
If you’re registered for VAT, your figures should not include VAT that you can claim back. If you’re not registered for VAT, or you’re registered for VAT but cannot fully recover the VAT you incur on costs, your figures should include irrecoverable VAT. Grants we make are ‘outside the scope’ of VAT and should be listed in your accounts as a grant and not, for example, as a fee for any services supplied to the BFI. You should get financial advice from your own accountant or the relevant tax office.
Cashflow
If you are successful, funding will be cashflowed in-line with spend over your proposed project delivery timeline subject to:
- satisfactory performance — you are able to continue to deliver your activity in line with your funding agreement and these guidelines
- receipt and approval by BFI of routine reporting including progress against KPIs and costs to date, and which can include proposed changes to approved plans to adapt to learnings and changing circumstances
- receipt and approval by BFI of updated annual delivery plans for 2027/28 and 2028/29
- demonstration that you remain financially viable through to the end of the term
The amount of funding that BFI can make available for 2027/28 and 2028/29 may be impacted by the ongoing availability of National Lottery funds at predicted levels. If we have to reduce funding for any year, we will ensure that we provide sufficient notice and work with you to modify plans accordingly.
Partnership funding
For your application to be eligible you will need to demonstrate an element of partnership support at no less than 10% of the total programme cost, which can include cash or in-kind support. Partnership contributions are an important demonstration that there is genuine support for your project from your community, stakeholders, and other partners.
Training programmes should include participation fees at a reasonable rate where realistic and where this does not prevent engagement. This income must be included in your budget and must not be kept or redeployed by you, the organisation delivering the programme. Where a participation fee is charged, provision should be made to ensure equitable access; this might be a sliding scale according to the size and turnover of the participants’ employers.
Partnership funding does not have to be secured at the point of application, but where it is an intrinsic element of the programme, it needs to be secured in advance of payment of the award from BFI and before the proposed activity start date. An update on securing partnership funding will be required as part of the quarterly performance reporting. Other BFI funds cannot be used as partnership funding and UK National Lottery Funding from another distributor should not be the only form of partnership funding.
4. What your programme needs to achieve
Business leaders (including emerging business leaders) should be able to apply new and improved commercial, operational management and inclusive leadership skills to develop independent exhibition and distribution businesses.
The programme should also provide opportunities for networking, collaboration and knowledge sharing, enabling distribution and exhibition businesses to identify and overcome shared challenges. The longer-term ambition is to build greater resilience among the UK distribution and exhibition sectors.
You will need to propose KPI targets and impact measures against which we will measure the success of the programme during the funded period.
Key Performance Indicators
We will measure the success of the fund using the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). As a minimum, you will need to set targets in your application in line with the following:
- Number of beneficiaries (per sector)
- Number of participant companies (per sector, see above)
- Geographic spread of participant companies
- Diversity of beneficiaries (see the BFI’s Inclusion Targets below)
Impact measures
You will need to include impact measures in your application, that you will measure pre- and post-intervention and which may include the percentage of beneficiaries:
- reporting increased knowledge
- securing increased investment
- establishing clear and costed business plans
- implementing marketing and fundraising plans
- reporting increased turnover or profit
- reporting improvement in workforce retention
- reporting improvement in worker satisfaction
- delivering a new product or service
Equity, diversity and inclusion
All activity supported by our funding should address the BFI Diversity Standards. For the BFI National Lottery Skills Fund, the areas we expect you to focus on are:
- what representation is considered and offered in your output
- who works for your organisation
- early career opportunities, training and career progression
- the diversity of beneficiaries and how you will reach them
- the overall accessibility considerations and commitments
If successful, you’ll need to report following the conclusion of your activity, evaluating how you’ve delivered against the aims of the BFI Diversity Standards in practice.
Your activity will contribute towards achieving the BFI’s inclusion targets; you will be expected to set targets in line with these in your application for funding.
UK-wide
Our funding supports national, regional, and local activity to ensure that communities throughout the UK feel the benefit of the screen industries and culture. You’ll need to tell us where your proposed activity will be delivered and how this will support the BFI’s UK-wide principle, as well as any partners you’ll work with to achieve this aim.
Environmental sustainability
You’ll need to embed the principle of environmental sustainability throughout your funded activity. You’ll need to consider how you’ll apply environmental sustainability (ES) principles to the funded activity or your organisation more generally. This could include:
- implementing good environmental practice for the project, for example, travel and events
- delivering virtual training where appropriate to ensure wider reach of modules and to limit travel
- embedding sustainability within your organisation more broadly
- exploring environmental themes as part of the work, for example, programming, training or skills development
Due to the range of organisations and activity that we fund, we’re not prescriptive about what you should focus on. For guidance, you can refer to resources provided by Julie’s Bicycle, particularly the Sustainable Screen Resource Hub, which outlines good environmental practices. To support the beneficiaries of your programme, you can also explore resources provided by BAFTA albert.
If funded, you are required to submit environmental impact data and report on how you have applied the ES principle. Find guidance on reporting on Julie’s Bicycle website.
5. How to apply
When you can apply
The deadline for your application is midday on 16 March 2026.
Information you need to provide
The main application form will ask you for some basic information including:
- total budget, amount requested from BFI and sources of any partnership funding
- a brief summary of your proposal
- how you will ensure UK-wide provision, including partners you intend to work with to achieve this aim
- how the proposal supports equity, diversity and inclusion
- how your proposal responds to the BFI’s Diversity Standards
- your approach to environmental sustainability, detailing your approach to environmental sustainability and net zero within the programme design, including any proposed training modules that relate to these issues
Documents you need to provide
You will need to attach your proposal to your application. Your proposal should be no more than 20 pages long and should be structured with the following chapter headings:
- executive summary, providing an outline of your organisation’s overall business plan for financial years 2026-29, to provide context for BFI funded activities
- your vision for the programme evidencing a strong understanding of key skills needs across the relevant sectors and setting out:
- what outcomes you hope to achieve by the end of March 2029
- the types of participant company you hope to engage in the programme and why you believe they should be prioritised for support
- the skills needs your programme will target (noting the skills needs identified above must be addressed as a minimum)
- the key delivery partners you will work with, why they have been selected and how they will support programme delivery across the UK
- outline programme delivery plan; an overview of your proposed programme of activity including:
- any individual strands and proposed modules, their purpose and how they work together to achieve your vision
- how you plan to engage relevant experts and how you’ll ensure they tailor their contribution to the programme so it’s accessible and relevant to programme beneficiaries
- an indicative course module breakdown, including proposed key learning outcomes and who will benefit from each module or strand of activity
- which programme elements will bring participants from exhibition and distribution together, which will separate participants, and the rationale for the proposed approach
- the size of each cohort you will aim for and why; we expect this to be conducive to the effective participation and development of beneficiaries
- proposed deliverables that relate to achieving your KPIs (for example, number and types of training sessions, total hours’ training delivered, direct contact hours per participant, delivery format)
- proposed recruitment and selection criteria for participants in your activity
- any resources that will be developed, and consideration of how these could be made publicly available
- any processes or systems to be used
- accessibility considerations
- timeline for delivery, including key milestones 2026-2029 and with delivery expected to start from summer 2026
- participant outreach and engagement plan, detailing how you will ensure successful engagement with relevant stakeholders in the exhibition and distribution sectors to support delivery against KPIs and across the UK
- monitoring and evaluation plan, which should include:
- proposed KPIs and targets in-line with the fund KPIs outlined above; you may choose to add additional KPIs and targets
- intended outcomes and impacts in line with the BFI National Lottery Strategic Outcomes and impact measures above
- a robust plan for how you will measure, track and evaluate progress over the course of the programme, including any systems to be used to collect and collate data and milestones for reporting back to the BFI, and any routes to collect participant feedback and follow up information
- experience and proposed management structure, detailing:
- why you are best placed to deliver this programme of activity
- key team member bios, including those of your key delivery partners
- an organogram showing the proposed management structure for programme delivery
- what portion of each role will be spent on delivery of the programme (as .FTE) and how this is funded
- your governance structure and oversight mechanisms, including the board and any steering or advisory groups to support your activity
- your process for escalation of issues, should they arise in relation to delivery of the funded activity
In addition, you will need to attach the following:
- a detailed programme budget, clearly setting out proposed use of BFI funds and detailing the status of all partnership funding, as well as indicative cashflow
- a programme risk register
- your last set of independently certified or audited accounts
- if more than 12 months has passed since the year-end covered in your last filed statutory accounts, please additionally provide draft accounts for the intervening auditable period as approved by your board (including both income and expenditure reporting and a balance sheet)
- your most recent budget and management accounts for the current financial year as approved by your board (including both income and expenditure reporting and a balance sheet), as well as any subsequent budget reforecast since board approval was provided
- budget/forecast for your organisation for financial years 2026 to 2029, accompanied by notes highlighting the assumptions made and key risks (for instance around renewal of funding from other sources)
- your organisational risk register
- your organisation’s sustainability policy or other relevant document
Equality monitoring form
You may be asked to provide equality monitoring data relating to your organisation’s leadership or project staff at the point of application or during your project. The data you submit on this form will be confidential, anonymous and not seen by the fund staff.
Submitting your application
To apply, you’ll need to create an account. You’ll then need to complete and submit the online application form. You can save your application and return to it when you need to.
Make sure you complete all the sections as incomplete forms will be automatically ineligible.
If you have any questions, please contact us on skillscoordinator@bfi.org.uk.
For guidance about how to use our new BFI applicant portal:
You can view a PDF preview of the application form to see the questions you will be asked in full:
6. What happens after you apply
You’ll get confirmation we’ve received your application within five working days.
You’ll get a decision within 12 weeks.
You’ll be sent:
- an email that your application is in progress
- a unique ID number for your application
If your application is ineligible
We’ll let you know that we cannot consider it for funding. If you’ve made a mistake in your application, and that’s the only reason it’s ineligible, we may get in touch with you so that you can correct it.
If we need more information
Once submitted, we will review your application and if necessary, may write to you or request to meet with you to obtain more information about your application. If we need additional information from you, it may take us longer to reach a decision on your application.
How your application is assessed
When assessing your application, we consider the public benefit from your proposed programme of activity and need for National Lottery funding along with the following:
- approach including the quality and feasibility of your proposal – you should provide a clear, strategic proposal that identifies:
- where key interventions are needed and how these seek to address relevant sectoral skills needs
- an open-access participation and assessment process
- how the proposed programme responds to the National Lottery Funding Plan Outcomes and Principles of funding
- how the proposed programme addresses the skills needs identified in the BFI’s Rapid Skills Review
- how the proposed programme complements existing provision; and
- how the proposal addresses the principles of EDI, environmental sustainability and UK-wide
- quality and ambition of engagement plan outlining how you will engage relevant exhibition and distribution sector employees in programme delivery and ensure representation of a spread of cinemas and venues across the UK
- quality of monitoring and evaluation plans including:
- reach and ambition of proposed KPIs
- evidenced understanding of impact
- a robust framework for collection of key qualitative and quantitative information, with identified touchpoints during the lifecycle of awards
- a clear plan for how and when data will be collated and reported back to BFI
- proposed budget, including the level of partnership funding secured, and whether the programme represents value for money
- evidence of the organisation’s ability and capacity to carry out the programme of activity, including:
- knowledge of the UK’s exhibition and distribution sectors
- understanding of the barriers to inclusive leadership practices, business sustainability and growth
- effective partnership working and a clear approach to engaging delivery partners and key subject matter experts to ensure best practice delivery of training in the skills need areas identified (as a minimum)
- robust governance and management structures
- financial viability of the organisation
- ability to deliver UK-wide
- commitment to environmental sustainability, and equity, diversity and inclusion
- how you, your team and any partner or contributor have managed any previous BFI awards
We may share parts of your application with other BFI teams or external consultants to help us assess it.
How we’ll prioritise applications
We get a lot of applications and cannot support them all. We prioritise proposals that:
- are closest to the fund objective and outcomes
- we think will have the biggest impact on addressing the identified skills needs for independent exhibition and distribution
- offer value for money
- take calculated risks and try new approaches
- aim for lasting business development impacts, beyond the end of the award period
We do not expect proposals to be fully developed when you apply. We will work closely with the successful applicant to refine their proposal in advance of delivery commencing in summer 2026.
Identity checks
We undertake due diligence assessments of the applications we are recommending to our decision-making committee for funding. We will request the personal address and date of birth of the CEO or Managing Director of the organisation applying. We will use this data to run an identity check.
Our request for this information is not an indication or confirmation of funding and you will be informed separately of the funding decision on your application. This is also not a credit check. We are unable to submit your application to our decision-making committee until we have received your completed form.
Grant and Lottery Finance Committee Consideration
Following assessment of each application, funding recommendations will be made to the BFI Grant and Lottery Finance Committee. This is the final stage of the funding decision process. All applicants will be informed in writing of the decision on their application.
7. Getting a decision
If you’re successful you will:
- receive a written offer of funding
- need to sign the offer of funding and return it to the BFI within 21 days
Your offer of funding will set out details of how you’ll receive the funding, how to use it and how we expect you to report to us. Read the conditions of funding section and General conditions of National Lottery funding to find out what you will have to do if you are offered an award.
If you’re unsuccessful
We may have turned down your application because we determined that the proposal:
- did not fit our funding objectives and outcomes
- did not demonstrate a strong enough commitment to one or all of the following principles: equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI); environmental sustainability; UK-wide
- did not demonstrate enough relevant experience
- was too ambitious for the budget
- was not yet developed enough
- did not demonstrate sufficient need for National Lottery support and should be financed by other means
- did not meet with the BFI Diversity Standards
Feedback on an unsuccessful application
If we had a meeting with you to discuss your application, you can ask for feedback on your application. We’re a small team and unfortunately that means we’re unable to give feedback to other applicants. We will keep the data and supporting materials you sent to us in line with our records retention policy. We welcome your feedback on the application process and how we might improve it. Email us at skillscoordinator@bfi.org.uk.
8. Conditions of funding
If we offer you an award, in addition to the General Conditions of National Lottery Funding, the following conditions will apply to your award:
BFI will require approval over the final design of the programme, the modules to be delivered, eligibility of prospective participants, the marketing/outreach plans for the programme and terms attaching to participation. As part of this BFI will work with you to ensure that any in-kind benefit to participants is provided in a way that is compliant with BFI subsidy legislation (where any benefit comprises subsidy).
You will be required to report on progress against all KPIs on a six monthly basis (at a minimum) and attend annual performance reviews as well as other routine or specific meetings with BFI colleagues to discuss progress.
Where you have included unsecured partnership funding within your budget, you will need to provide updates on securing this finance to the BFI (normally as part of your performance reporting but, where such partnership funding is intrinsic to delivery of the activity, as a pre-condition to the funding agreement). The BFI may elect to withhold or withdraw your award if you are unable to secure the level of partnership funding required to deliver the activity as planned or require that you submit revised plans and budget showing how the activity could be delivered without the planned partnership funding.
You will be required to work collaboratively with relevant BFI departments and partners, including BFI FAN, the awardees for the BFI’s other Business Development Training Programmes and the BFI’s Good Work Programme delivery partner, to support the sharing of key learnings and potential joint working to maximise outcomes for the BFI Skills Funds.
You will be required to gain BFI approval for any marketing or related materials for your funded activity, in line with branding guidelines that the BFI will provide to you.
You will be required to take part in an evaluation of the Fund by the BFI (or its contracted party). You must retain all data relating to your programme, its participants and its impact until the end of the BFI Screen Culture Strategy in March 2033.
You will be required to provide any resources (including research, insights and data reports) that are developed under the funded activity to the BFI and ensure any resources developed using National Lottery funding are made publicly available.
You will need to adopt safeguarding provisions for protecting children and vulnerable adults and ensure that data on all participants in, and beneficiaries of, the Skills Fund can be shared with BFI in compliance with UK data protection legislation.
All awardees will be required to work with our designated cultural sustainability partner to assess their environmental impact. Further guidance and support will be provided to you once the award period begins.
The BFI National Lottery Funding Plan 2026-2029 has been developed based on predicted income from future National Lottery ticket sales that would fall due to BFI. In the event that receipts to BFI are lower than predicted we may have to make reductions across all funding plan programmes. The amount of funding that we can make available for the later years may therefore be impacted by the ongoing availability of National Lottery funds at predicted levels. If we have to reduce funding for any year, we will endeavour to ensure that we provide sufficient notice and work with you to modify plans accordingly.