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UK gender campaign group Reclaim The Frame, Bristol’s Watershed cinema and the Independent Cinema Office (ICO) are among the biggest recipients of the British Film Institute (BFI) National Lottery Audience Projects Fund, which has named the first 17 projects to receive awards that total £6.5m.

The BFI National Lottery Audience Projects Fund has £15m available over the three years of the BFI’s new National Lottery Funding Plan (April 2023-March 2026).

Thirteen awards are for three-year projects running until March 2026, while four are for short-term activity.

Reclaim The Frame – the not-for-profit organisation previously known as Birds’ Eye View that campaigns for gender equity in all film spaces – has been awarded £420,000 to help grow impact across the nations and regions.

The cinema to receive the most money is Bristol’s Watershed, with £585,000 to develop and test new marketing and promotional initiatives as part of a strategy to engage with younger and more diverse audiences.

Home, the Manchester cinema, has been given £555,000, to focus on opening up the venue to a greater range of audiences that are representative of Manchester’s population, 

The ICO has the largest pot, with £1.3m to deliver a number of initiatives for the independent exhibition sector, with a focus on supporting venues to identify gaps in the audiences engaging with their venues.

Scroll down for the full list of award recipients

The funding aims to secure 4.67m admissions over three years ,with a focus on audiences that are representative of the UK population.

The awards represent support for 203,846 screenings, of which 91,357 will be accessible screenings (45%). The average number of accessible screenings per project is 50%. Of the 17 awards, 11 are to organisations based outside of London and south east England, although all awarded projects will have activity outside the region.

Ben Luxford, BFI’s head of UK audiences, said: “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, to celebrate and champion fantastic screen culture and enrich communities across the UK. Our National Lottery funding is for public benefit, so we are working with projects which have demonstrated a strong commitment to reaching and welcoming audiences who are currently underserved by their activities. These projects also demonstrate the variety of activity and organisations we can support through the fund, which I hope inspires future applicants.”

BFI National Lottery Audience Projects Fund

Multi-year recipients

  • Broadway Cinema – £480,000
  • Home – £555,000
  • Phoenix Leicester – £270,000
  • Queen’s Film Theatre – £270,000
  • Showroom Cinema – £480,000
  • Watershed – £585,000

Festivals and special programmes

  • Arts Alive in Shropshire and Herefordshire – £180,000
  • Reclaim The Frame – £420,000
  • Carousel Project – £363,000
  • Tongues On Fire – £105,000

Audience initiatives

  • Cinema For All – £520,440
  • Independent Cinema Office (ICO) – £1.3m
  • YourLocalCinema – £114,000

Short-term projects (April 2023-March 2024)

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