Showroom Cinema wins £585k BFI award to launch ambitious film festival

Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema has been awarded £585,000 from the British Film Institute (BFI) as part of a new initiative to launch a three-year project titled ‘Festival Foundations & Film Futures’.

The BFI recently announced the first 23 beneficiaries of the BFI National Lottery Audience Projects Fund, a national scheme aiming to distribute a rolling £19.7 million fund towards UK exhibitors and film festivals. In the hopes to encourage the exhibition of immersive and audience-facing films over the next three years.

The original independent cinema, Sheffield’s Showroom, intends to use the funding to develop a new film festival tailored towards young children and adults, supporting community outreach and increasing access to screen culture.

Johnathan Ilott, Head of Programming at Showroom Cinema said: “For over 30 years, we have expanded access to screen culture, championed diverse voices, and created meaningful opportunities for young people to engage with, learn from, and shape the stories on screen.

“We’re delighted that this funding will help us to keep building those ambitions and deliver even more screenings, programmes and festivals that have audiences and inclusivity at their heart.”

The funding aims to generate an impressive 3.05 million UK cinema admissions, through supporting more than 88,000 screenings.

Out of the 23 awards, 17 will be appointed to long-term projects with a duration of two to three years, offering cinemas the stability to implement strategic audience development schemes to attract and retain new audiences. 

Whilst the latter will target shorter-term activities which align to the fund’s preliminary purpose of growing new audiences who are representative of the UK population. 

Ben Luxford, BFI’s Director of UK Audiences said: “We hope these initial funding awards demonstrate our commitment to UK Wide screen culture for audiences and we look forward to announcing more in the coming years.”