Film institute awards £600,000 over three years to Berkshire Skills Cluster

A film institute has awarded £600,000 over three years to a Berkshire-based ‘Skills Cluster’ to boost accessibility to the industry and develop and train new and emerging crew.

Resource Production CIC, based in Slough, Shinfield Studios, and the University of Reading have partnered to create the cluster, which led to the successful funding bid.

The funding from the British Film Institute (BFI) is part of a wider industry scheme to support skills training and development throughout the UK, as the film and TV production industry faces an ‘acute skills shortage’.

The initiative looks to make the industry more accessible and help to train and develop emerging and new film and TV production crew.

It aims to create new opportunities for those entering the workforce, individuals from under-represented backgrounds, those who are upskilling and jobseekers who are over 50 and returning to work.

This follows a continued growth in significance for the film and TV production sector in the Berkshire area.

Recent developments include the on-going construction of Shinfeld Studios production facility which, when completed, is set to become ‘the fourth largest of its kind in the UK’.

The Berkshire cluster will be led by Resource Productions CIC, with all groups working together closely to identify skills shortages and co-ordinate training opportunities for crew in the area.

The aim of the cluster is to build a bigger local skills base and help people to find viable routes into the industry, while also offering effective career development support.

The cluster is part of a wider investment programme by the BFI, which has £9.6million of National Lottery funding over three years to boost skills and training throughout the UK.

The Berkshire Skills Cluster is unique as it is focused on a single county, while the other clusters announced through the BFI initiative cover wider UK regions and nations.

This Skills for Screen Cluster has been made possible by the continued support of Berkshire Film Office by all six local authorities: the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, Slough, Wokingham, Reading, Bracknell Forest and West Berkshire.

Further information about how the funding is going to be used and access to related schemes will be available from the autumn.

Dominique Unsworth MBE, CEO of Resource Productions CIC, said: “After more than two decades organically diversifying the talent supply chain from our not-for-profit in Slough, we are really excited to bring this skills investment into Berkshire.

“It will enable us to drive forward the great work of our partners across education, training, industry and government. We’ve all been talking about screen sector skills gaps for so long – now we actually have some resource to enable real action.”