The Future Film Skills programme, delivered for the BFI by ScreenSkills with National Lottery funds, has now helped around 80,000 people with more than 90,000 activities since it was launched three years ago.
The strategy aimed to support 25,000 people by 2022 – 10,000 already in the industry and 15,000 trying to get in.
But strong take-up of training courses, bursaries, careers sessions and mentoring, particularly over the last year, means these numbers have been already exceeded. The coronavirus basic awareness online training which was rolled out last year to support the safe return to work was a particular success and was taken by 56,000 people to the end of March.
Nearly three-fifths of the people supported so far - are already in the industry with about the same number living outside London and the South East. Half of them are women, 14% have told us that they are Black, Asian or minority ethnic, 9% that they have a disability and 13% say they are LGBT.
The figures for most of these under-represented groups are higher without the coronavirus training which was widely adopted by the existing screen workforce. For example, excluding the coronavirus training, 18% of those supported by the Future Film Skills initiative have been from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds and 14% report a disability.
Support for finding, developing and retaining an inclusive and skilled workforce over the last year of Future Film Skills included:
- Launch of Film Forward, a mid-career progression programme for Black, Asian and minority ethnic screen professionals
- Second year of Centre of Screen Excellence: Yorkshire recruitment in craft and tech courses
- New e-learning in unconscious bias as well as coronavirus basic awareness
- 1,800 students at ScreenSkills Select colleges and universities given work-readiness training
- First Day: On Set immersive VR experience designed to introduce a range of jobs on set won a Production Guild GB innovation award
- 1,500+ mentees were matched with mentors – and 37% of mentees identified as from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background
- Online community of registered users grew to 106,000, an increase of 76,000 over the year
- Website traffic grew by +200% to 8 million page views
- Customer satisfaction: end of initiative questionnaire satisfaction rate was 93% (return rate 92%) across all Future Film Skills activities booked through the ScreenSkills website.