Futures in film: Community visions for film and television opportunities in Whitley, Reading, United Kingdom

Abstract

Recently, Berkshire in the United Kingdom (UK) has seen rapid developments in film and television (TV) studios and the skills training sector. The Creative Industries Sector Plan 2025 looks set to further enable investment in technology, skills and research to consolidate UK’s position as a creative superpower. A diverse, local and well-trained workforce and talent pipeline has been considered crucial to achieve this goal, with education and employment remaining central to these conversations. Local residents make up the local workforce. Yet accessing emerging opportunities by local communities remains uneven and unequal. Skills training and workforce development initiatives have been largely led by industry and government priorities, with relatively little attention being paid to community perspectives on this matter. This article unpacks the work done by community members in Whitley (Reading) and students and staff at the University of Reading (UK) in 2023, as part of the Futures in Film project. This practice-based research project sought to address these access gaps via a methodology that combined ethnographic and participatory filmmaking approaches to both explore research questions and facilitate skills training for an under-served community.
Contribution: In this way, the project’s original contribution lies in the establishment of a new model of practice that fruitfully aligns industry, education and government priorities with community expression, skills training and academic research outputs. Ultimately, the project and this article advocate for deeper community engagement to strengthen the implementation and evaluation of creative initiatives, thereby making a case for decentralised feedback mechanisms to fine-tune film and TV training initiatives and influence future developments.