Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure

OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard)

Savings Delivery Plans: Northern Screen

16 April 2015 ASSEMBLY

Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure

Savings Delivery Plans: Northern Ireland Screen

16 April 2015

Members present for all or part of the proceedings: Mr Nelson McCausland (Chairperson) Mr Gordon Dunne (Deputy Chairperson) Mr Leslie Cree Mr David Hilditch Mr William Humphrey Mr Basil McCrea Mrs Karen McKevitt Mr Oliver McMullan Mr Cathal Ó hOisín

Witnesses: Ms Linda Martin Northern Ireland Screen Mr Richard Williams Northern Ireland Screen

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): From Northern Ireland Screen, we have Richard Williams, the chief executive, and Linda Martin, the head of finance. I invite you to make your opening statement. Apologies for keeping you for some time, but, as you can see, there is considerable interest in arts funding. It is important to give members an opportunity to raise questions.

Mr Richard Williams (Northern Ireland Screen): Thank you, Chair. We are entering the second year of our four-year strategy, Opening Doors. It is primarily funded by DETI through . In the first year of the strategy, we achieved most of the things that we wanted to achieve. We have shifted successfully to a strategy that is designed to deliver a balanced screen industry, with strength not only in large-scale productions such as 'Game of Thrones' or the Dracula film but in television drama, independent film, factual entertainment, television animation and digital content, particularly gaming.

I move now to the highlights from last year. Animation was hugely successful. 'Lily's Driftwood Bay', 'Puffin Rock' and the Zig and Zag series are animation projects that are doing very well in the young people's market. Television drama has been equally strong with 'The Frankenstein Chronicles', a project for ITV, joining what has become our staple returning series, 'The Fall' and 'Line of Duty' for the BBC. Independent film had an equally strong year. The most high-profile independent film is probably 'Boogaloo and Graham', a short film that not only won a BAFTA but was Oscar-nominated. We also supported three other locally produced and directed independent films. 'The Survivalist' has not yet been screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, but it has had its press screenings. All the critics were very positive about that project. We are excited about what is happening there, not to mention the huge success that the feature documentary 'Road' on the Dunlop dynasty had in the last

1 year. That reimagined the financial model for that type of project: it did enormously well, selling on Amazon, iTunes and those sorts of outlets.

In factual entertainment television, we have had the biggest breakthrough in 10 years through a start- up company called Stellify Media, which is backed by Sony and has been commissioned by the BBC to make a large-scale and ambitious entertainment show, 'Can't Touch This'.

At the outset of the Opening Doors strategy, we undertook to try to drive gaming and digital content harder, and we appointed an expert in that field. He led our first trade mission to San Francisco to a games development conference. He is working closely with the newly created private sector Gaming NI grouping.

The Broadcast Fund also had a very strong year. Critically, the highlight was 'An Bronntanas', which had two forms: it was a television drama series and was also cut as a film. It was Ireland's nomination to be considered as a foreign film at the Oscars. It also won at the Irish Film Festival in Boston. An education project from Tobar won at the Dublin Appys, which are digital awards. Most recently, a successful series on the Mournes was broadcast.

The Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund has been equally energetic over the last three or four months. It had two notable series in 'Imagining Ulster', which went out a couple of months ago and provoked some discussion and interest, and 'Then Sings My Soul', which went out in a similar time frame to positive response. 'Five Fables', another Ulster-Scots project, has been nominated for two awards at the Celtic Media Festival, which is coming up next week. I should not say this in a public forum, but I would be surprised if it did not win one of those two awards. I hope that it will.

In the DCAL-funded aspects of our strategy, we had, as you are well aware, a very anxious period before Christmas when we thought that we might be facing a scenario in which our DCAL funding would go from a high point two years ago of £3 million a year down to £1 million a year. With tremendous support from our stakeholders and, most critically, the beneficiaries and users of their services, through the public consultation, that position has shifted, and we have an indicated budget for this year of £1·87 million, secured by the Minister. Obviously, that is considerably less than £3 million but is a lot more than £1 million.

We have calculated that the £1·87 million is sufficient for us to sustain the main core elements of the educational and cultural ecosystem that goes alongside the economic work that is supported by Invest Northern Ireland. That £1·87 million will allow us to keep the doors open in the three creative learning centres at the Nerve Centre in , Nerve and the AmmA Centre in Armagh. The three creative learning centres are the backbone of and most important driver in our education strategy and education work. I will give you some indication of the scale of what they do. In the last year, they worked with 2,500 teachers, and, importantly, they exceeded their targets. In the context of the Minister's policy priorities, we targeted them with working with at least 70% of schools that are in the most-deprived areas and have the children who are in greatest need. They exceeded those targets. Over the three creative learning centres, they had 75% on that target. It also allowed us to continue our after-school film clubs, which are delivered through Into Film by Cinemagic and the Nerve Centre. At the moment, they reach over 260 schools across Northern Ireland. In the previous evidence session, there were questions about penetration and reach in different areas. There are two things to say about the 260 schools with after-school film clubs: first, they are all schools that have the greatest level of need in the education system, and, secondly, they are spread right across Northern Ireland. It has also allowed us to continue our support. It would have been lights out for these organisations if they did not have our support of Cinemagic, the Foyle Film Festival, CultureTECH and the Belfast Film Festival. I have a quick plug for the Belfast Film Festival. It opens tonight with Mark Cousins's film, 'I Am Belfast', and will go on for the next 12 days or so. They are tremendous supporters of the local content that is produced here and work very closely with us.

Lastly, the funding has allowed us to continue our work on the digital film archive. I have another plug: we are relaunching the digital film archive on Friday at the . I can recall saying this to you before, Chair: I think that the digital film archive is our strongest tool for outreach and social inclusion for the simple reason that one of our primary and most successful audiences for the digital film archive are folks in nursing homes, who, maybe not surprisingly, respond enormously well to archive material from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, which obviously reflects periods of their lives.

As far as we are concerned, this is all a very positive story, but that is not to say that there have not been casualties as a result of the cuts in the savings delivery plan: there have been cuts. We have sought, as far as we possibly can, to protect front-line services. As I said, we want to sustain the

2 whole ecosystem, and I think that we can do that. We have applied a 5% cut almost completely across the board. The creative learning centres have been saved from that, but everything else, including our own overheads, has received a 5% cut. As to how we will deal with that cut in our own overheads — that came up in the previous evidence session — we are expecting to avail ourselves of the voluntary exit scheme to a modest degree.

Maybe most significantly, we dropped an ambition that we had developed only recently — I know that it is a great disappointment to the Northern Ireland Screen board — which was to become much more involved in developing and supporting education provision for coding, with the support of CoderDojo, with after-school clubs that are similar to the after-school film clubs. We think that coding and coding education are very important elements of a successful future for Northern Ireland's economy, and the issue needs to be addressed. It does not need to be addressed by Northern Ireland Screen in particular, but we are disappointed that we have stepped back from that. We have also stepped back from our ambitions to pilot a digital apprenticeship scheme, which would have targeted social inclusion more aggressively. We were considering working with the Prince's Trust to develop that, but we have had to put that on the back-burner. Also facing very considerable cuts is our contribution to FabLab, a Nerve Centre initiative on the STEAM agenda using 3D printers in education forums, to which we have greatly reduced our commitments.

Overall, we are pleased, or at least content, that the funding indications for this year allow us to sustain the educational and cultural ecosystem that, as far as we are concerned, is required if we are to maximise the economic benefit, particularly the longer-term economic benefit, of what we are doing in the screen industries.

The primary reason for our contentment with the indicative outcome is probably that, historically, when we had £3 million of DCAL funding, we attracted that through a range of project funding. We were doing very well, and, any time there was a cross-departmental project, we were usually able to attract funding from it, and we tended to attract funding from it for short-term funding. That was very good, but it is not so good when you are in a cutting position, and all those short-term programmes disappear. That is why we were facing the possibility of our budget going from £3 million to £1 million. The indication is that the £1·87 million is our new baseline, which sounds a good deal more stable than our previous funding structure. It is one of the reasons why we are reasonably satisfied with the outcome.

That is all that I want to say for now.

Mr Ó hOisín: I listened to a radio report this morning about the Belfast Film Festival, which had feared a 50% cut but seemed content — I would not say satisfied — with the subsequent 5% cut. How essential is the like of that and, indeed, the Foyle Film Festival to the local production end of things?

Mr Williams: All the festivals are very important. The more we grow the screen industries — they are growing here significantly — the more important the festivals become. The way I see it, the routes into jobs and opportunities in the screen industries are not clear or standardised as they are to get into the Civil Service or to become a doctor. It is extremely important that such opportunities are visible to young people and the community generally, and all the festivals — Cinemagic, the Belfast Film Festival and the Foyle Film Festival — play their part in that.

We could not have a successful screen industry that was based entirely on content developed elsewhere and that simply utilises our services, crews and infrastructure; that is at the heart of the Opening Doors strategy. We must have our own stories and celebrate them, and the festivals play a strong part in that. The Belfast Film Festival, in particular, will showcase three significant films produced and directed locally along with a number of others in its programme over the next 10 to 12 days.

Mr Ó hOisín: I should declare an interest in that I trained under the Irish Language Broadcast Fund. A colleague who did the same, Pilib Mac Cathmhaoil, is the director of Tobar, which won at the Appys in Dublin. Is there still scope in NI Screen and elsewhere for people coming out of that sort of background or elsewhere to get a placement so that they could develop their own stand-alone companies?

Mr Williams: Yes — very much so. Every year, £250,000 is set aside in the Irish Language Broadcast Fund for training-related activities, including new entrant training and training further up the skill levels and across Northern Ireland Screen more generally. As the sector has grown, so have the

3 opportunities, and the importance of training and skills development becomes greater. That is a very big focus for us. What I will say specifically about the Irish language sector is that it is finite. In global terms, it is relatively small. We see the whole of the screen industries in terms of an ecosystem, and each element in that ecosystem can sustain only a certain number of people. So, for example, we have to keep an eye on how many new entrants we bring into any element of the sector, because if you simply push new entrants, you will inevitably reach a point where all you are doing is undermining the opportunities for last year's new entrants, because you are bringing in subsidised new entrants this year. So, you have to keep a focus and a holistic view on the whole ecosystem. The Irish language sector is doing enormously well including, importantly, beginning to internationalise, which has the economic impact of bringing other finance to the table. So, there are opportunities.

Mr Ó hOisín: It is a bit of a shame because the BBC has not moved much on that in recent times in production costs.

Mr B McCrea: I was amazed that you managed to get an uplift of £800,000 on a budget of £1 million in the current financial circumstances. Would you care to explain to us how you worked that bit of magic?

Mr Williams: I would not call it magic. As I was trying to explain, the DCAL budget for Northern Ireland Screen is complex because it has been made up of project funding. We felt that it was real that we were facing a potential budget of £1 million. It is equally true that two years back, we received £3 million. So, as much as you can say that we pushed it up from £1 million to £1·8 million, it also dropped down from £3 million to £1·8 million. To answer the question, any which way, we got a good result from where we were sitting. I do not see the full picture, but my understanding is that there was a response to the extent of the contributions from end users, particularly of the creative learning centres and of —

Mr B McCrea: Some 23,000 people applied to the Arts Council and said, "We really need more money", and the result was, "You are still getting your 11·2% cut". You got significantly more funds than you had in the draft Budget — up from £1 million to £1·87 million — which is a good result for you. I am not chastising you; I am asking you how you did it?

Mr Williams: I am not comfortable with the comparator element, because it is certainly not for the screen industries to be competing with the complementary and interconnected arts sector; but the elements that were facing cuts are hugely well aligned to the ministerial priorities in the extent to which they are targeted at those in greatest need. That is one aspect of it. I get the sense that our message that this is an ecosystem —

Mr B McCrea: What percentage of your funding comes from DETI?

Mr Williams: We will receive something between £8 million and £10·7 million from DETI this year.

Mr B McCrea: What will you receive from DCAL?

Mr Williams: £1·87 million.

Mr B McCrea: It always surprises me that you have this hybrid funding whereby you are getting £8 million to £10 million from DETI and yet you are responding to DCAL. What sort of cut have you had from DETI?

Mr Williams: The shortest answer to that is that we do not know and we will not know for quite some time. The arrangement we had with Invest Northern Ireland, last year as well as this, is that at the start of the financial year we have a guarantee of £8 million, but we are working to a strategy that is £10·7 million.

Mr B McCrea: As you know, I am supportive of you. Let me just point out that it is pretty hard to do oversight when you have people in front of you who say, "We were down to £1 million; we are now up to £1·87 million; but, by the way, we have £8 million coming from another Department, and it might be £10 million, but we are not sure." The issue in this is about clarity of purpose. I support a lot of things you do and, in fact, I am really disappointed that the CoderDojo, in particular, has not received £115,000. If anything is going to get this country moving forward, it is young coders coming in. I take your point, Richard, that maybe it is not your specific remit to do it, but somebody has to do it.

4 Can I ask you one last question? It is an open question. The challenge for NI Screen is about film, or at least that is what I thought it was, but you could be looking at things like community TV. I know that you fund some of the Irish language acts in that. I wonder why we are not extending our film festivals into community television and then, perhaps, onwards to content provision in America on the public service network out there? Is there any work that your organisation would look at in that regard?

Mr Williams: I only partially understand the question. The festivals work with Northern Visions Television (NVTV), in particular, to a degree, and they certainly have considerable community outreach.

Mr B McCrea: If you do not understand the question, let me just rephrase it. Because community TV came and spoke to us, I went to see them. I saw the Irish language students they have there, and that was interesting. They then said that they had this great opportunity to punt content to America. There are people out there who are interested, but nobody has quite got it together.

Mr Williams: There are two elements to that. Within the context of the Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund, we will be looking at NVTV in the near future because it has had a very significant change in its model recently, which you are aware of. NVTV now sits on button 8 or 9 of Freeview, so there is now considerable potential for it to be viewed by significant audiences in a way that was not really the case in the past. That makes it considerably more significant in terms of reaching, or potentially reaching, audiences in Northern Ireland. I would trigger a note of caution in terms of that playing out to reaching audiences in America. I would describe it this way. We now all sit with televisions which have enormous numbers of channels, the vast majority of which none of us ever look at. We have no awareness of even the titles of the channels. It is possible to be broadcasting merrily in the States, or indeed in any other country, for long periods of time without anyone actually watching. I suggest that this might be the case with some elements in the US, but I take a completely different view of the potential of NVTV in Northern Ireland, because it sits very high up the buttons.

Mr B McCrea: I will not detain you any further, but I think that there is an opportunity for Ulster Scots to come forward on this as well. Somebody has to take the lead on it, and I was inquiring whether NI Screen or some other body should do that. I will finish on that question.

Mr Williams: Certainly, NVTV approached us in the context of the Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund, and the fund's committee will be reviewing that possibility in the near future. I am not sure what the outcome will be. The limitation of NVTV is that it is still Belfast, so it will not reach anywhere else in Northern Ireland; but it has considerable reach compared to two months ago.

Mrs McKevitt: Thanks very much for your presentation. I want to pick up on something that Basil raised that was in your presentation, which is stepping back from the likes of coding education and, indeed, the digital apprenticeship schemes you had planned.

At the beginning of this mandate in 2011, there was a creative industries inquiry in which you were involved. Out of that came the issue of education and careers advice for students, bringing them into, and promoting, the creative industries, and the lack of knowledge on it. I thought that those issues were starting to be addressed when we heard that you were thinking about coding education and delivering a digital apprenticeship. What happened with the Prince's Trust and you that this is not going to happen now? It cannot all be budgetary.

Mr Williams: Yes it can. The first thing to be clear about is that when you go back to the creative industries inquiry and the need for visible routes into the sector, we are addressing that extremely strongly. That is why the creative learning centres, in particular, are the elements of our educational and cultural work that receive no cuts from us. They are the key pieces of infrastructure in driving this with, if you like, secondary support from the festivals.

In my view, you are correct in your assertion that those aspects are getting better. This is primarily because of the work of the creative learning centres but is also as a result of the feeding that is interconnected with the creative learning centres as a result of the success of Moving Image Arts at GCSE and A level, which is attracting talent at a much earlier point. It is getting better also because of an initiative by the British Film Institute (BFI) that we have supported strongly, whereby we have Easter academies for 16, 17 and 18-year-olds, allowing them exposure to the highest levels of experience in the film industry.

5 Do not get the impression that we have stepped back from what we would call modern apprenticeships. If everything goes to plan, we will have between 40 and 50 18-month-long apprenticeships in the screen industries on our books this year. The single project that dropped away, and for only monetary reasons, was a pilot project that was going to be more focused and aggressive at targeting those in greatest need.

Mrs McKevitt: The phrase "step back" was your own terminology in your presentation. That is why I used it when you were speaking about them both. There has been film industry growth here, particularly in the past couple of years, with big films like Dracula and Philomena being promoted and filmed in Northern Ireland. How are we going to fill the gap?

You have outreach programmes to 260 schools with after-school film clubs. That is fantastic and is opening doors to people who would probably never have been introduced to the digital end other than maybe through social media. What is your plan to fill that gap; because you were doing really well?

Mr Williams: The skills gap?

Mrs McKevitt: Yes.

Mr Williams: Within the Opening Doors strategy, the development of skills is one of two or three No 1 priorities. We have a series of modern apprenticeships across gaming, animation and factual television. We have trainees placed in Game of Thrones and the other projects. All our projects have trainees placed in them. We have other exciting developments, like the new animation degree at the University of Ulster under Professor Maguire, which is delivering highly skilled people to the sector on a yearly basis. There is a whole range of different interventions and initiatives to ensure that we keep the skills there. For me, the key thing is sustaining the ecosystem, because at the same time as you are developing the skills you have to make sure that you continue to attract work, otherwise you are simply training people for export. It is about the whole ecosystem: valuing the economic, cultural and educational value in equal measure and keeping an eye on the balance between it all.

Mr Dunne: I was going to make the point about apprenticeships, but I think it has been well covered. Just clarify how your organisation works. I have been down to Titanic Studios with the ETI Committee and it is certainly a very impressive setup. I take it that the running of all that structure down there comes under the £8 million to £10 million budget that you talked about. Then there is the budget we are looking at here. How are the two run separately? Can you clarify that for us, please?

Mr Williams: I will try to. The first thing to say is that Titanic Studios is privately owned and run. There was a period of time at the outset when we took a lease on the Paint Hall and ran it directly, but that is a long time in the past. Our support for Game of Thrones and Titanic Studios and all of that comes through Invest NI.

Mr Dunne: Are they run separately from the £1·8 million budget that we are looking at today?

Mr Williams: Yes and no. DCAL provides 23% or 24% of our overheads at NI Screen; so, if you take us as people, there is a percentage being paid by DCAL, a percentage being paid by Invest NI and another small percentage being paid by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and BFI and whatever.

There is a very clear line as to what the money is spent on. It is not merged into a single pot, so I can tell you exactly what all the DCAL money is spent on. It is spent on the cultural and educational aspects. Going back to Basil's point, we seek to deliver it as an integrated package. Our strategy is based on the notion that we have to sustain the whole ecosystem. Like other elements of society, that ecosystem has bits that relate to all the different Departments. Our key two at the moment are DETI and DCAL but, quite frankly, the Department of Education and DEL are of equal importance to the sector. It is just the nature of government structure that splits it in this way.

Mr Dunne: Is your organisation also responsible for the production side of all these films and so on?

Mr Williams: Absolutely.

Mr Dunne: You are. You have an overall responsibility for that, which in the main has been very successful. We all recognise that. You talk about the after-school film clubs that you are

6 discontinuing: slightly reduced, I suppose, at £304,000. How do you go about identifying the various schools that you go into?

Mr Williams: Well, it is aligned to the ministerial priority. The primary way of identifying those schools is by using the Department of Education's definition of extended schools, which are the schools that they define as having the catchment in greatest need. That is the No 1 way of defining those schools. We also include special schools and those institutions that deal with young people who have been excluded from schools. Primarily, we use the extended schools definition that is used by the Department of Education.

Mr Dunne: Where are most of those schools? Are they in inner-city areas, or are they spread throughout the boards?

Mr Williams: They are spread all over the place. I have a map in the office that shows me where all those schools are, and they are spread pretty evenly across Northern Ireland.

Mr Dunne: OK. Thanks very much.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): You mentioned your funding and where it comes from. The DCMS is presumably paying for staff costs to administer the Irish Language Broadcast Fund and the Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund. Does that money come out of those funds, or is it in addition?

Mr Williams: No, that comes out of the —

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): — two respective funds.

Mr Williams: The two respective funds pay a proportion of —

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): OK. That is fine. Secondly, you mentioned the Imagining Ulster series. That was a series of three programmes which was very good. There have been some excellent programmes. You also mentioned that the Ulster-Scots committee was looking at the issues around NVTV and so on. We are coming towards the end of the cycle of the two funds, and there will then be negotiations about how they develop going forward.

The Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund is different in a number of ways from the Irish Language Broadcast Fund in the type of programming it produces. The issue is in ensuring that there is high quality content. It should not be Ulster-Scots light and that element should be maximised. Some programmes are very good and there were others that you could have done more to beef up and strengthen, because bits were left out. There were others that I would suggest were a bit ropey. They might be quite attractive to the audience that they would appeal to, but the Ulster-Scots content was very light.

If there is another cycle, will a piece of work be done so that the money delivers the maximum value?

Mr Williams: All the funds need to be continually reviewed, which is not particularly connected to the fact that there will need to be a recommitment from DCMS to the Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund and the Irish Language Broadcast Fund. The Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund is still relatively new and is still maturing and evolving. A piece of work is being undertaken with the stakeholders to assesses what everybody thinks that the —

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Who is that being done with?

Mr Williams: There is a whole range of stakeholders. The agency has undertaken to bring together a number of stakeholder groupings within Ulster Scots. We are also bringing together the production companies, the broadcasters and the committee.

On your point about programmes being Ulster-Scots light or very light — I think that was your accusation — there is, and always will be, a balance to be struck and a decision to be made between the number of the people you reach and, if you like, the density of the detail. That is not specific to Ulster Scots and applies to all sorts of programming. If you take, for example, the series that have gone out on UTV, they reach enormous numbers of people, not only in Northern Ireland but in and, with UTV Ireland, the .

7 I submit that, when you are reaching those sorts of numbers, even if the Ulster Scots is light or very light, you are still getting a message to a very large number of people. I suggest that it is about the success and appropriateness of the content over the whole portfolio over time.

I think I can speak on behalf of the committee in saying this; there is absolutely no doubt that there are still considerable gaps about what should appropriately be covered. Provided that DCMS recommits, I am sure that the committee will plug those gaps over time.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): William, did you want to ask a question?

Mr Humphrey: No.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Thank you very much, indeed. That was very helpful. Thank you for your presentation.

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