This Way Up 2014 awards pitch winners £50,000

The inaugural This Way Up: Exhibition Innovation conference at the Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle closed yesterday with the announcement of the pitch winners.

The panel, which considered three pitches, has awarded the Exhibition Innovation Fund prize of £50,000 to two projects: Move It, led by Animate Projects and the Centre for the Moving Image, and Edinburgh and AV Festival’s major site-specific installation DS30 by Test Dept.

Move it is a ‘networked’ season of British and international animation covering a breadth of film and art practice, from Aa to Aa (Aardman to Artists’ moving image).

Premiered in March 2014, DS30 is a political collage of sound and image featuring archive film footage from the 1984/85 miners’ strike.

The first-ever Exhibition Innovation Fund was pitched live to conference delegates and considered by industry panel members. The panel was comprised of Shona Thomson, producer Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema; Sarah-Jane Meredith of UK Wide Audiences, Film Fund BFI and Susan Picken, Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast and Film Hub NI.

In awarding the fund the industry panel commented that they were “pleased with the range of projects and the potential for partnership working and community engagement across all three hub regions.”

Dave Moutrey, CEO HOME, Manchester closed the conference with a look ahead to This Way Up 2015, during which he will welcome delegates with the focus of “engaging communities and sharing ideas.”

This Way Up: Exhibition Innovations is organised by Film Hubs North, North West Central and Scotland as part of the BFI Film Audience Network.