Download our annual report below:
The ICO has continued to support the film exhibition industry as we have slowly emerged from the disruptions of the pandemic towards a ‘new normal’ that, for us, will include the welcome return of many of the things that we missed, while keeping the real sense of openness to outside voices and accessibility that has emerged during this period.
Our Annual Report gives a snapshot of the work we’ve been doing over the last twelve months. We hope you enjoy reading it, but here are some of the highlights:
- We hosted five Screening Days events where we welcomed a record 718 unique delegates from 375 unique organisations, with 177 of those delegates attending for the first time
- Film Hub South East’s membership grew to 231, an increase of 36%
- Our Programming Network has now expanded to 30 clients
- We launched our innovative new platform The Cinema of Ideas, where we showed 33 rarely-screened films and ran 13 specialist live events in collaboration with nine participating cinemas
- The 2020-21 FEDS Trainees finished their placements and we successfully recruited the next round of organisations in collaboration with alumni on the FEDS Co-Creation Committee
- Women’s Leadership supported 10 senior managers from across the UK’s film exhibition sector with one-to-one coaching, skills development workshops and high-level networking opportunities
- Open Calls have brought new voices and emerging curators to The Cinema of Ideas and to Screening Days where we’ve benefitted from the expertise of our first Screening Days Advisory Group
- 25 projects from 23 organisations were awarded a share of £133,130 funding from the National Lottery through the FHSE’s streamlined Film Exhibition Fund
- Our Advice and Info service dealt with 1,090 enquiries and ICO guides were downloaded 2,222 times
- In total, we have funded 59 filmmakers across the South East as part of BFI NETWORK South East
- BFI NETWORK South East produced a highly-successful short-filmmaking podcast Short Hand, which has so far been downloaded over 4,000 times
- We distributed Ousmane Sembène’s 1968 classic of African cinema Mandabi to over 50 venues
- We introduced our new, more equitable, Jobs Board policy and advertised 721 film industry jobs for free
- We published 40 new pieces on the ICO Blog, which received 21,042 views
- We transformed the way we recruit our staff and trustees so that we reflect UK society better and benefit from a greater range of skills and backgrounds
- We welcomed six new Trustees to the ICO Board