EXCLUSIVE: The BFI National Lottery Creative Challenge Fund has re-opened today (April 14) with an expanded remit to include support for independent producers and invest a further £1.7m by March 2026.
UK screen organisations can apply for funding of between £12,000 to £150,000 to create and deliver long and short-term project development programmes for live action and animation fiction and documentary features and narrative immersive film work.
It is designed to complement the BFI Filmmaking Fund’s development funding and coincides with the Development Fund’s increase in producer fees from £2,000 to £3,000 per stage.
The first iteration of the Creative Challenge Fund focused on emerging filmmakers with genre projects. This time, as well as emerging genre, the remit also includes development labs that focus on early career producers and independent producers with ambitious projects of scale.
The Fund was established to help decentralise the development offer for UK independent filmmaking. It said it is seeking applicants who can create labs designed to maximise the chances of projects securing further development finance or financial support in the marketplace.
The initial fund supported eight programmes across the UK. The genre-focused labs included the UK Next Wave Genre Lab from Film Constellation, The Residency from Story Compound, Funny Features from Glasgow Film Theatre, and Develop-CreateXR from Screen South, and supported 86 projects from 130 writers, directors and producers.
Mia Bays, director of the BFI Filmmaking Fund, said: “We established this fund to encourage and enable our industry to help us to approach project development differently, and the response we got to the first challenge was inspiring.
“We supported fantastic programmes which attracted projects that the lab leaders felt have major potential but may not have been on the usual radars. The changes we have made to the Fund and the emphasis on supporting independent producers, see us responding to what we are hearing from industry and focusing on where we believe the fund can have the greatest impact.”
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