The BFI announced February 16 that it will continue to prioritise dedicated support of the UK documentary filmmaking sector via National Lottery ‘good cause’ funding. As part of the roll out of the new BFI National Lottery Strategy, Doc Society will receive up to £6m over three years as BFI’s UK-wide delegate partner to distribute documentary funding across features and shorts, as well as support talent development.
The BFI Doc Society Fund will be opening for applications during April-June 2023, the first three months of the new BFI National Lottery Strategy. Recruitment will also start imminently for a new Head of Fund who will work closely with Sandra Whipham and Shanida Scotland, Directors of Doc Society.
Doc Society was selected following an open application process which sought “a partner with expertise in the documentary sector to deliver to the aims and objectives identified in the new strategy.” Funding for three years from April 2023 will see Doc Society build on the success they achieved as the BFI’s delegate partner for documentary since 2017. BFI cites recent doc highlights such as the BIFA-winning Nothing Compares (dir. Kathryn Ferguson), BAFTA nominated Rebellion (dirs. Elena Sánchez Bellot, Maia Kenworthy), winner of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival’s Audience Award A Bunch of Amateurs and BAFTA winning short The Black Cop.
Mia Bays, Director of the BFI Film Fund, said: “Independent UK documentary filmmaking is vital to our cultural landscape. To maximise the impact of our funding we are working with a partner to bring genre-specific knowledge, expertise and an international network to help support, grow and nurture this sector. Our new strategy sets out refocused priorities for this area of work, and in Doc Society we have a fantastic partner who will not only work to deliver to them, but whose passion, genuine care and tireless belief in the power of documentary and our talented filmmakers will benefit this remarkable and tenacious sector across the whole of the UK.”
Sandra Whipham, Co-director of Doc Society, said: “We are over the moon to have been given the opportunity to build on our work of the past five years with another three years of
the documentary film sector to ensure that the best independent creative non-fiction gets made and seen by audiences in the UK and internationally.”
Shanida Scotland, Co-director of Doc Society/Head of Film for Doc Society, said: “Over the past five years we are proud to have collaborated with a range of film teams, all of us focused on the same ambition: to craft documentaries that elevate creative documentary and to support the funding. At a time of rapid change and challenge, we are ready to lean in and collaborate with documentary film sector. We are thrilled to be able to continue in this collaborative effort, which allows us to bring some of the most important issues affecting the documentary film sector to the table. Thank you to the BFI for their continued and dedicated support as we work together to champion the field.”
Doc Society will “develop and evolve” the funding and support it will offer from April 2023 to meet the new BFI’s new National Lottery strategic priorities, and to take on learnings from the previous five years, the BFI statement underlines. There will be a strong focus on deepening regional and national opportunities through the BFI Doc Society Fund to support features and Made of Truth, the short film strand, which will again form the documentary arm of BFI NETWORK.
The BFI National Lottery Strategy 2023-2033, informed by an extensive consultation with public and industry, is underpinned by three core principles of equity/diversity/inclusion; UK- wide roll-out; and environmental sustainability that are embedded throughout the strategy.
The £6m funding for documentary announced today seeks to address the following key priorities:
- More people understand how to express their creativity through stories on screen, including children and young people
- Creative talent is supported and nurtured, as they emerge and throughout their careers
- People are better enabled to innovate and experiment creatively
- A wider range of stories are told that otherwise wouldn’t be
- People across the UK can access a wider choice of film and the moving image including
- stories that reflect their lives
- Equitable and more visible routes into the sector for people of all ages
- People from under-represented groups across the UK can access the support they need
- to develop their careers and skills
In an email statement released after the BFI announcement, Doc Society wrote:
‘Today the BFI has announced that Doc Society has been selected to continue serving independent documentary filmmaking and filmmakers as the BFI’s UK-wide delegate partner from April 2023…
‘We are psyched. We want to say a huge thank you to our colleagues at the BFI for this opportunity and to our own team for their hard work to date. But the biggest thanks goes to you, our documentary community. You are the reason we exist, your films are the reason we bounce out of bed in the morning. We hope to continue to earn your trust and respect.
‘Doc Society shares a vision with the BFI for a more confident, more future-focussed, more diverse, more creative and more united documentary making community in the UK over the coming decade. We align with the BFI’s new National Lottery strategic priorities, including a strong focus on deepening regional and national opportunities. As part of the roll out of the new BFI National Lottery Strategy, Doc Society will be responsible for receiving up to £6 million over three years for documentary funding across features and shorts, as well as an ambitious support talent development programme. We welcome the BFI decision that future documentary funding may be offered as a grant rather than investments, as a measure designed to strengthen filmmaking sustainability.
Our promise to you: we embrace this role with a commitment to collaboration: to work in close community with those at the heart of documentary storytelling, to work in unity with our colleagues across the sector (and across the UK) and to build and champion the independent documentary field. We will strive to ensure that the best independent creative documentaries get made and seen by audiences in the UK and internationally and that the voices behind the stories and the films we see, are representative. We have set ourselves four guiding principles:
- Open collaboration. No one person has all the answers.
- Representing all of UK society. From the ground up, the Fund must be representative of society.
- Freedom of creative expression. Documentary filmmakers should be able to take smart creative risks on documentary storytelling.
- Audience right to culture. From big screen to smaller screens, audiences have a right to be able to access film culture.
- We cannot wait to get started and will be sharing further developments with you all.
Documentary lives here. Love, Doc Society
