Creative England distributes £465,972 in Film Culture Lottery Funding

Creative England has unveiled the recipients of its first round of Film Culture Fund Lottery awards, totaling £465,972 of investments in 39 projects.

These are the first awards made by Creative England since it launched in October 2011. The Film Culture Fund aims to support creative work in venues, festivals, archives and rural and community cinema schemes.

The biggest recipient is Sheffield Doc/Fest, which has secured £40,000, followed by Bristol’s arthouse cinema The Watershed [pictured] which picked up £37,500. Bristol’s Encounters Film Festival also picked up £25,000 as did Cinecity in Brighton. The Rural Media Company in Hereford picked up £26,799.

Despite concerns that Creative England would hold a bias towards the West of the UK (as its proposed hubs were due to be in the cities of Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester), the split in investment between East and West is almost exactly split down the middle.

However the South of England fared better than the North, with £240,747 of investment going to Southern based festivals/institutions as opposed to £166,100 to Northern based and £59,125 to Central based projects.

The South West of the UK did particularly well, receiving 14 investments and £172,447 in total, the most of any region.

Creative England CEO Caroline Norbury said: “It is a great reflection of the vitality of film in England that we received so many strong applications to this first round of Lottery awards.  While we had to make some tough decisions I am confident we are backing the right spread of projects across the country with these awards, which will benefit each of these organisations and the audiences they serve.”

The full list of awards:

£10,000 Abandon Normal Devices Festival, Manchester (North West)
£6500 Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York (North East)
£5000 Afrika Eye Film Festival, Bristol (South West)
£5000 Armadillo Youth Venue and Café, Yate (South West)
£15,000 Arts Alive: Flicks In The Sticks, Herefordshire & Shropshire (South West)
£10,000 AV Festival, Newcastle, Gateshead, Middlesborough, Sunderland - (North East)
£5000 Movies On The Move, Bath – (South West)
£10,000 Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Berwick – (North East)
£15,000 Blaize/Cine Yorkshire, Yorkshire (North East)
£9,500 Borderlines Film Festival, Herefordshire and Shopshire, (South West)
£12,000 Bradford International Film Festival, Bradford –(North Central)
£25,000 Bristol Encounters International Film Festival, Bristol – (South West)
£7,500 British Silent Film Festival, Cambridge - (South East)
£18,800 Cambridge Film Consortium, Cambridge (South East)
£5000 Canterbury Anifest, Canterbury (South East)
£10,000 Carousel, Brighton (South East)
£16,125 Cinema Plus, Norwich (Central East)
£25,000 Cinecity, Brighton (South East)
£20,000 Cornerhouse, Manchester (North West)
£2,448 Curzon Community Cinema, Clevedon (South West)
£10,000 Dartington Hall Trust, Devon (South West)
£2000 Filming East Festival, Chichester (South East)
£3000 The Gloval Village Film Festival, Corsham, Wiltshire, (South West)
£4600 Keswick Film Festival, Cumbria (North West)
£12,000 Leicester Arts Centre, Leicester (Central East)
£10,000 Light House Media Centre, Wolverhampton (Central West)
£5000 Ludlow Assembly Room, Ludlow (South West)
£18,000 Media Archive for Central England, Lincoln (Central East)
£9000 Northern Region Film & Television Archive, Middlesborough (North East)
£3000 The Ritz Cinema French Film Festival, Derby (Central East)
£26,799 The Rural Media Company, Hereford (South West)
£40,000 Sheffield Doc/Fest, Sheffield (North East)
£8000 Sheffield Media & Exhibition Centre, Sheffield (North East)
£4000 Signal Films, Cumbria (North West)
£21,000 South West Film & Television Archive, Plymouth (South West)
£5000 Sunderland Live Big Screens Festival, Sunderland (North East)
£2,200 Swindon Film Festival, Swindon (South West)
£37,500 Watershed, Bristol (South West)
£12,000 Yorkshire Film Archive, York (North East)