In our case it was a room on the top floor of Sunderland’s new City Hall. In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stage musical Hamilton, it was a house in Lower Manhattan. But on both occasions, key players gathered to shape the future.
No one really knows how the game is played
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens
But no one else is in the room where it happens
The £6bn post-pandemic boom in TV and film production is welcome news amid the uncertainty caused by the freeze to the BBC licence fee and the planned privatisation of Channel 4.
The global expansion of content platforms and the UK’s fantastic reputation as a country that delivers excellent programmes means that there is more TV and film being made here than ever before. But there is a problem: we are predicted to have a shortfall of 40,000 creative-sector workers by 2025.
Before the pandemic, the UK production sector was stretched for talent, thanks to its extended boom. Now, as the sector revs back up to full speed, the skills issue is becoming even more pressing.
A panel of experts discuss how we can strengthen the unscripted sector, develop skills and improve inclusion in the nations and English regions in this RTS and ScreenSkills event.
The event was held in conjunction with the launch of the Unscripted TV Skills Fund on the 1 June 2021- an ambitious £3 million investment into training those working in unscripted TV genres. For more information about the fund click here.
Chair:
Learn how to write a strong CV for the small screen industry with helpful hints and tips from the ScreenSkills team.
It is the best of times: the television business is booming. It is the worst of times: there is a skill shortage, so wage costs are soaring. Yet shouldn’t that make it the best of times again? Won’t television be forced to find and train a new generation of programme-makers who won’t all be white and middle class? This, I tell Seetha Kumar, the ambitious chief executive of ScreenSkills, is a battle she can win.
“We need to match talent from around the UK with skills shortages,” he told an audience at the National Glass Centre, part of the University of Sunderland, in early July. “And we want to help build sustainable infrastructure in different parts of the country linking universities, colleges and employers.”
ScreenSkills works across the UK to ensure that film, television (including children's and high-end drama), VFX (visual effects), animation and games have the skills and talent they need.
The ScreenSkills scheme invites 75 more recruits for film and 40 more for television, from a variety of backgrounds, to apply for the scheme that offers paid work opportunities across the UK.
Previous film trainees have worked on Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Peterloo, Stan and Ollie, and Lady Macbeth.
