ScreenSkills celebrate five years of the Future Film Skills Programme at showcase

ScreenSkills marked five years of the Future Film Skills Programme at a showcase at London’s Somerset House to celebrate its success. Funded by the National Lottery, commissioned by the British Film Institute and delivered by ScreenSkills, the Future Film Skills Programme has helped over 119,000 people progress in the screen careers since its launch in 2018.

The showcase welcomed beneficiaries who had taken part in a FFS-funded initiative to join ScreenSkills’ Head of Film and Animation, Gareth Elis-Unwin, and industry talent for a morning of talks and discussions on the Future Film Skills Programme’s impact, its delivery and what the future holds for developing skills and supporting careers within the screen industry.

Initially a four-year initiative, the programme was extended by an extra year to help the screen industries recover after the Covid pandemic. During that time it had three broad aims: to encourage people to consider a screen career through entry-level opportunities, to support those already in the industry and to encourage and welcome people from under-represented backgrounds to join the industry.

Introducing the event Seetha Kumar, ScreenSkills CEO, said: “I would like to thank the BFI for the generous and supportive way that they worked with us on this Programme. It has been a productive and collaborative partnership - enabling industry via ScreenSkills to come together, pool resources and build the foundations for a much needed, strategic and unified approach to skills for our largely freelance and project-based sector. The Programme itself has been an immense undertaking, - the ambition being to galvanise the sector and create sustainable opportunities, set a high bar for quality training and standardise it - so our industry can be future fit.”

Showcase host, Welsh radio and TV broadcaster Sian Eleri, then introduced the first of four sessions which saw Gareth Ellis-Unwin in conversation with Editor of Screen, Matt Mueller. Discussion focused on the ambitions of the Programme to enact real change across the industry and allowed for reflection of the achievements made over the course of its five years, offering an opportunity to highlight some of the key numbers over the five years of the programme, including:

• 24 Apprentice Standards have been developed, updated or launched, enabling 3,300 apprenticeship starts
• Future Film Skills has introduced 4,000+ mentees to industry mentors, with ScreenSkills collaborating with partners through the mentoring network
• 4 million people viewed the first Future Film Skills cinema and cross-platform ad campaign in 2019
• 180,000 development opportunities have been completed, with 124,000 e-learning completions
• More than 2 million users have accessed bespoke online career resources on the ScreenSkills website
• 2,765 bursaries have been awarded, totalling over £2m to enable individuals make career progress

Session two, titled Food for Thought, was an opportunity for delegates to hear first-hand from beneficiaries who have been part of ScreenSkills’ mentoring programmes on the benefits of being both a mentor and a mentee and how it helped their career.

Daisy Church, programme manager for mentoring at Media Trust, was one of four on the panel and contributed a feature on the subject for ScreenSkills website, discussing how mentoring can prove just as beneficial to the mentor as it does to the mentee.

Read more about how mentoring can help develop your career

That was followed by second beneficiary panel, What a difference a course makes, welcoming four people whose screen careers have begun or progressed through support by the Future Film Skills Programme. Alya Minnery spoke about how receiving a ScreenSkills bursary enabled her to embark on her filmmaking dream, while hairdresser and barber Mucktaru Kargbo reflected on the hair and make-up transfer programme that allowed him to use his existing skills and apply them in a screen environment.

Accountant Sharon Soor and concept artist Mel Cummings completed the panel with both previously taking part in ScreenSkills Cinema Campaign, a series of videos that played across UK cinemas and online platforms raising awareness about the range of roles available in the screen industries – and how to access them.

The day’s final session was hosted by Screen’s executive editor, Finn Halligan and looked to the future of film skills in the UK. Gareth Ellis-Unwin was joined by BFI’s Harriet Finney, Caroline Cooper-Charles from Screen Yorkshire and Lyndsey Duthie from The Production Guild to ask ‘what next’ and examine the future needs of the industry and its workforce.

There was agreement among the panel that continued collaboration remains vital in order to maintain the good work so far achieved. Continued focus on creating career pathways and retaining talent will be paramount to the continued success of the UK’s screen industry, as will targeted investment and adopting national and regional opportunities to ensure the highest of standards throughout.

On a day that encouraged reflection, Seetha Kumar spoke of the lasting impact of the Future Film Skills Programme. “In this, our fifth anniversary year, I believe that the Future Film Skills Programme has been one of our most successful initiatives. This is because of the amazing commitment and passion of my colleagues across the organisation; the support of our training partners, thousands of industry volunteers and the hard work and dedication of our beneficiaries themselves.

“The Future Film Skills Programme will leave a lasting legacy – not only a library of learning tools that people can continue to use, and improved access to, and pathways into training and education, but as importantly, the shared experience that we will all take with us as we continue our own careers in in the screen industries.”