Latest BFI Innovation Challenge funding seeks to address data gaps across the UK independent film industry
The fund has awarded £200,000 to British Screen Forum to focus on mapping and improving analysis of data related to financing, audience engagement and commercial performance of independent film.
The BFI National Lottery Innovation Challenge Fund is awarding £200,000 to British Screen Forum, who will work with partners University of Exeter and Goldsmiths, University of London, to develop viable and sustainable solutions to address longstanding data gaps across the UK independent film ecosystem. By providing more robust insights, the project ultimately aims to boost investment and profitability of UK companies in the film sector.
Through the project, British Screen Forum will build partnerships and create systems to explore innovative ways to share and report on film and company data that respects privacy, commercial sensitivities, and business models. Delivering two pilot case studies, the first will focus on data sharing between distributors and exhibitors, providing both groups with new insights on films and film audiences which will seek to improve audience targeting and optimise marketing spend.
The second pilot case study will develop a new database which captures commercial performance of films in a way that balances privacy and commercial sensitives with useful detail, with the aims of identifying revenue-maximising strategies and clarifying sector value for financiers and investors
“UK independent film continues pays just as vital a part in our cultural life as it has always done,” says Rishi Coupland, the BFI’s Executive Director of Industry Development & Innovation. “It’s not always recognised that, in recent years, trends have shown that the public watch more, not less, films than they ever have before. What is changing is that the ways in which our audiences access films, and their motivations for watching them, have diversified and multiplied. Here at the BFI, we have matched our support for the making, distribution and exhibition of independent film with an increased commitment to publishing a respected suite of research and data — including our upcoming report Small Screens, Big Focus. With this new Challenge Fund award we are taking our support further by enabling the British Screen Forum, in partnership with universities and the sector, to explore ways in which new data can help producers and companies across the value chain, to find audiences and secure investment.”
Pete Johnson, Chief Executive, British Screen Forum, said: “We are delighted to have been awarded funding for a project focused on addressing one of the key challenges for UK independent film. It has long been established that the lack of access to data and data insights acts as a drag on investment and on profit maximisation in the sector. With case studies led by Dr Michael Franklin (University of Exeter) and Ben Keen (British Screen Forum) and with input from Dr Martin Smith (Goldsmiths) this pilot project aims to address the problem head on with a view to finding innovative mechanisms to unlock data insights that can stimulate equity investment and boost revenues at various points along the film value chain.”
The BFI National Lottery Innovation Challenge Fund, as part of the BFI’s National Lottery Funding Plan, 2023-2026, seeks to support new solutions to the UK screen sector’s most critical challenges. Between 2024 and 2026, up to £1.8 million will be distributed across up to five challenges, to help not-for-profit organisations to innovate, developing new approaches to persistent problems, whilst also gaining insights that benefit the whole screen sector. Its first call focused on the video games industry, followed by AI for screen archives, and EDI data collection for film production. As part of the 2026-2029 BFI National Lottery Plan, the Innovation Challenge Fund has £2.55m available across multiple challenges over the three-year period.