About

This is the latest project in an ongoing research collaboration which examines the sustainability of the film and television sectors in small nations.  In earlier phases we investigated key factors in the provision of media in and from small nations including talent development, digitalisation and internationalisation.  In this project we focus on one particular part of the screen landscape – publicly funded screen agencies.

Our Research Questions

The scale and role of intermediaries within the screen sector has expanded partly in an attempt to boost national competitiveness.  For many of these agencies a continual balance must be struck between economic and cultural agendas. Therefore, this research examines some of these tensions and asks:

1. What is the role of publicly funded screen agencies on the culture and outputs of film and television industries within and from small nations? How might their activities and practices contribute directly to the sustainability of the nation’s screen industries?
2. How are economic and cultural ambitions experienced and framed by those working within these agencies?
3. How has intervention in the market changed and where do the priorities for screen agencies lie today?
4. What kinds of exchange have these cultural intermediaries enabled and what kind of relationships do they leverage in order to achieve their aims?
5. What are the implications of their decision-making on forms of representation and for what we see (or don’t see) on our screens.

The Research Framework

Over the course of this project we will draw on a number of methods including interviews, policy analysis, quantitative mapping and observation.  This mixed method approach deepens and extends our critical understanding of the making of creative content and the ways in which cultural policy is shaped and enacted.

Valuable research has been carried out on individual screen institutions (e.g. Schlesinger et al 2015, Oakley et al 2014) and on the national cultural policies in which these agencies are embedded (e.g. Hesmondhalgh et al 2015, Bondebjerg 2016). However, many of the challenges regarding the riskiness of cultural production, the competitiveness of the global television and film industry, and the power exercised by Anglo-Saxon markets are common to many countries.  Therefore, this study is designed to reveal comparative difference and commonalities and will initially focus on screen agencies within Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and Croatia as countries with established screen sectors, well developed policy frameworks and active screen agencies.

We also draw selectively and critically from work by Bourdieu and others (Maguire & Matthews 2013, Negus 2002) on cultural intermediaries in order to reinvigorate questions of power within the process of cultural production.

This research is part of our commitment to knowledge exchange and collaboration between academia and the wider public sphere including industry and policy-makers.  This two-year project began in June 2018 and is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the Early Career Researcher grant scheme. Full details of the award are available here.