British filmmaking suffered a seismic shock in July of last year, when the then-freshly-inaugurated coalition government took its axe to the UK Film Council, the body that had been responsible for awarding National Lottery funds to UK-based productions since 2000.

However, while the UKFC might now be little more than a crossed-off name on Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s hit-list, the funding it formerly allocated is still to be made available to budding movie-makers, via organisations such as the newly-launched Creative England, which just so happens to be gearing up to receive its first wave of applications.  

Following the decision to pull the plug on the UK Film Council, it was latterly announced that the British Film Institute would assume the former’s role as dispenser-in-chief of Lottery funding, and it is the BFI that in turn is giving its backing to Creative England.  

Having whirred into action at just the start of this month, the responsibility of Creative England is to support English filmmaking and other creative industries (TV, games, and digital services also come under its remit) based outside of London, with a particular emphasis on film culture, talent development and production.    

To achieve these objectives, a number of new funds are being launched, with a Film Culture Fund (focusing on festivals, archiving, cinemas and suchlike) accepting applications from 17 October, and a Talent Development Funding initiative (helping regional and national organisations, as well as individual writers/directors/producers), which will be considering bids from the start of November.

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