BFI invests £6.5m in audience engagement

The British Film Institute (BFI) has split £6.48m across 17 film and broader screen projects in the first round of its new Audience Projects Fund.

The fund, designed to grow audience engagement, has awarded 13 multi-year funding grants to six venues, four festival and specialist projects and three audience development organisations, alongside four awards for short-term activity.

Venue recipients include Manchester’s Home, Bristol’s Watershed and Belfast’s Queen’s Film Theatre. Shropshire and Herefordshire-based festival Arts Alive, new UK Asian Film Festival Tongues on Fire and Flatpack Festival have also received grants.

The largest grant, totalling £1.33m over the next three years, has gone to the Independent Cinema Office to develop intiatives in the independent exhibition sector.

The 17 projects combined are aiming to generate 4.67m admissions UK-wide. The awards represent support for 203,846 screenings, 45% of which will be accessible screenings.

The majority (11) of the awards are to organisations based outside of London and South East England, with all awarded projects hosting activity outside the capital.

“As we kick off our new BFI National Lottery strategy, we’re proud to support these organisations to focus on the necessity of growing new audiences,” BFI Head of UK Audiences Ben Luxford said.

“These projects also demonstrate the variety of activity and organisations we can support through the fund, which I hope inspires future applicants.”