The UK Film Council and the ‘Cultural Diversity’ Agenda

Abstract

From May 2000 until its demise in 2011, the UK Film Council (UKFC) was the main film funding body in the United Kingdom. While many critics have analysed the economic successes and failures of individual films that it funded over this period, little has been written about its influence on the UK film industry more broadly. Of the handful of articles that have addressed this area, the question of the diversity of the UK film industry, and the UKFC's alleged failure to make it more accessible, is a consistent theme, supported by damning data from Creative Skillset and the UKFC's own reports, which suggest that in many areas the industry is even less diverse now than it was when the UKFC was first established. Yet despite this evidence, there has until now been no engagement with the views of the staff actually making funding decisions at the UKFC. This article attempts to redress this oversight, by augmenting existing data with interviews with former leading figures in the UKFC's script development and diversity departments, in order to present a richer picture of the issues surrounding UK film funding and the ‘cultural diversity’ agenda. In so doing, I seek to unpick some of the common critiques levelled at the UKFC's record on diversity, and explore why the numerous measures that it put in place failed significantly to change the composition of the UK film industry.