Welcome back to your monthly round-up from the ICO, featuring the latest opportunities for your cinema, festival or film society and industry highlights from the UK and beyond.
ICO News
- Our UK Film Exhibition Workforce Report is now live, sharing insights from 620 survey responses and offering a snapshot of who works in film exhibition, their workplace experiences, and their skills and career development needs.
- Passes for ID Screening Days (Inclusion and Diversity) are on sale now! Taking place online on Wednesday 8 July and in-person at Derby QUAD on Friday 10 July, it’s a chance to preview screenings and take part in curated sessions designed to help you broaden your audiences.
- We’ve launched a year-round Inclusion and Diversity Action Group for anyone who works in independent exhibition to share ideas and get support.
- Our free webinar on data-driven programming decisions is taking place on Tuesday 16 June. Hosted by the International Film Festival Network, in partnership with Eventive, speakers include Anita Lee, Chief Programming Officer at Toronto International Film Festival in Canada (TIFF) and Aneta Ozorek, Artistic Director at Kaboom Animation Festival .
- The International Film Festival Network are also accepting new registrations, with membership available for just £100 + VAT/€120 per year!
- There are still opportunities to support in-person speaker screenings of Uncommon Voices: Exploring Class in New British Cinema at your venue. To discuss, email bookings@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk.
- The ICO is seeking blog pitches from industry voices offering insight into film exhibition. Read over our blog guidelines and share a brief outline of your idea with info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk.
- Looking for new opportunities? Check out our Jobs Board to find a range of open roles.
Resources, Opportunities and Events
- The first five sessions for BFI FAN CON have been announced! Hosted by leading organisations such as Watershed, ZAMEK Culture Centre, and Filmbankmedia, the first sessions cover a range of topics from community programming and outdoor screenings to data analysis and audience building, with more still to come.
- The final deadline for Bespoke applications to Rip It Up, the 2026 BFI FAN UK-wide season, is Wednesday 1 July. Exploring and celebrating the changing face of youth rebellion, culture and expression on screen in the UK, a menu of films are available to develop a bespoke season of films at your venue – including ‘event cinema’ project activity.
- Join some of the most inspiring voices in the worlds of exhibition, distribution and restoration at Cinema Rediscovered’s Reframing Film Sessions, taking place at Watershed (Bristol, UK) on Wednesday 22 July, the opening day of the festival’s 10th edition.
- Film Hub Scotland is running the next BFI FAN EDI Webinar on Thursday 11 June at 2:30pm. Covering how to build community partnerships, the session will feature three film exhibitors who built meaningful, lasting relationships with disability groups within their communities: Scarborough Film Festival, Ropetackle Arts Centre, and Magic Lantern Cinema.
- BFI’s Audience Screen Engagement Tracker has published its first report, “Small Screens, Big Focus,” which looks at how mobile devices are reshaping viewing habits and audience behaviour.
- Reclaim The Frame have relaunched their consultancy services, offering tailored support to help organisations grow reach, deliver impactful campaigns, and embed meaningful inclusion and accessibility practices.
- The government has announced a range of measures to support families from June 25th to September 1st, including a VAT reduction on both children’s and family cinema tickets from 20% to 5% across all UK nations, and HMRC are hosting two webinars on 5 and 8 June to explain everything you need to know.
- Film Hub Wales is hosting a new, free webinar on Marketing and Campaigns to connect with working class audiences alongside Laura Burch (Work & Class) on Wednesday 17 June at 1pm.
- The Film and TV Charity has launched its 2026 Looking Glass Survey, inviting the whole industry to share their mental health experiences, anonymously. Insights from previous surveys have helped drive real change – from shaping new services and tools to informing policy – and that impact is only possible through broad participation.
- Film Hub Northern Ireland has released a new BFI FAN Screen Heritage resource on Demystifying Catalogues, which includes a recorded roundtable and a toolkit.
- Accessibility Across the Board is a new Online Learning Course offering practical steps to help your organisation develop a more accessible and inclusive culture and environment. Register now and receive lifetime access to complete at your own pace.
- Film Hub North have published a new toolkit, Show Me the Money, sharing Top Tips on Securing Funding for ‘Green’ Capital Projects
- A day of experiential workshops and a salon event centred around restorative care for Global Majority cultural professionals, Re-UP! Reset is taking place in person at Brixton House Theatre, London on Monday 22 June.
- For those unable to attend in person, a free, online Re-UP! Reset will also take on Monday 29 June. The poetry-inspired online workshop invites Global Majority cultural professionals to reconnect with joyfulness as a way to bring levity, movement, and energy.
- There’s still time to register for the Cool Off in Culture Campaign. An initiative led by the BFI and Arts Council England in partnership with Julie’s Bicycle, cultural venues in the UK can put themselves forward to be listed as public, air-conditioned refuges during heatwaves.
- Historic England, ACE and Film Hub North are delivering Carbon Reduction Training for the Heritage Sectors, featuring a range of webinars including “Digital emissions: should heritage organisations worry about them, and how can we lower them?” on Thursday 18 June.
- FUBU Film Club, a digital archive and free online cinema space dedicated to the research, curation, and preservation of Black moving images, have created an updated black film and video catalogue as an ongoing digital archive of black moving image from 1960 to 2015.
Good Reads
- Arts Professional asks, is membership dead? Their Membership Matters report found 92% of arts and culture organisations have one, but new research shows they are trying to be all things to all people.
- Kati Price, Head of Experience and Digital at the V&A, shares how they meet young audiences where they are for Cultural Content.
- The UK Film and TV Charity have introduced an “industry first” anti-racism well-being adviser, chartered psychologist Anthony Newton, who will support Black and global majority professionals working behind the scenes in film, TV and cinema who are experiencing racism, racialised bullying or harassment.
- Gendered Intelligence’s respond to the amended EHRC Code of Practice, stating it could prove disastrous for trans people and those who want to support them.
- Screen asks, has the Dutch cinema sector discovered the secret of arthouse box-office success?
- Can a cinema become a concert venue? In the US, AMC and Arena One are planning to use cinemas as national live-concert venues, with performances by Bebe Rexha, Paris Hilton, Kim Petras, and Maren Morris to be shown live in more than 300 AMC locations.
- The Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma festival in Montreal recently experimented with screening films in cinemas at 1.5x speed.
- Variety explores Rover, a new service that provides films accompanied by their screenplay, a technical breakdown of equipment and cameras used and a long-form recording from the director in which they go deep on their development journey, festival strategy and other points of interest.
- Looking at box office data from the highest-grossing films from 2010 to 2026, Screen International box office editor Charles Gant and TikTok creator Florence Rose argue that celebrities are no longer the biggest reason audiences buy cinema tickets and instead point to other factors that drive success.
- Cannes 2026 featured many multinational co-productions, cementing a new narrative trope: characters from different countries addressing one another in their native languages, multilingual enough to understand one another.
- IndieWire reports on the New Models of Financing panel at Cannes, where decision-makers from an eclectic group of film financing companies discussed how financiers are focused on audiences more than on the films.
- Unrecognised digital labour is a hidden cost in many cultural organisations, and new survey results showed that nearly half of respondents report that unplanned digital work has caused projects to be delayed, reduced or descoped.
- Reclaim The Frame shares its recommendations from the 79th Cannes Film Festival.
- Criterion’s latest movie recommendations investigate Office Romances on Film.
- Screen shares insights from the UK Cinema Association executive roundtable, discusses rising box office, streamer titles, ticket pricing and slate consistency.