Edinburgh Research Explorer Investing in people before buildings Citation for published version: Dawson, L 2021, 'Investing in people before buildings: The case of Filmhouse Edinburgh ', MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture. <https://maifeminism.com/investing-in-people-before-buildings-the-case-of-filmhouse- edinburgh/> Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Published In: MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 INVESTING IN PEOPLE BEFORE BUILDINGS: THE CASE OF FILMHOUSE ©EDINBURGH Photo by Karen Zhao by: Leanne Dawson , February 17, 2021 Edinburgh is famous for both its beauty, natural and architectural, and its arts and festivals. Each summer, pre-pandemic, the city was home to the world’s largest arts festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, alongside Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Edinburgh International Television Festival, and the world’s oldest continually running lm festival, established in 1947: the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF). Edinburgh also has numerous lm screening venues, including independent cinemas: Filmhouse, Dominion, and Cameo Picturehouse; several multiplexes such as a Cineworld, a couple of Vue locations, and a handful of Odeon cinemas scattered around; plenty of other spaces that screen lm, ranging from the Grassmarket Community Project, which won the UKs Community Cinema of the Year in 2019 to the Scotsman Picturehouse, a luxurious cinema which is part of a hotel. Furthermore, as a truly cinematic city, much lming takes place there. Architecture and cinema unite in plans for a proposed £60,000,000 new cinema building called New Filmhouse for the Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), Scotland’s lm charity which combines the current Filmhouse and EIFF, and also has a base at the Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen. The timing of the proposal is signicant: we are currently in the midst of a huge health and economic crisis and many may rightly wonder why such a large sum should be spent on a cinema. I argue that the moving image has very much proven its worth once again in recent times as it has kept many of us entertained during lockdowns, ‘while the sciences are trying to create a vaccine and therapeutics for COVID-19, the arts are playing a positive role in maintaining our mental health and wellbeing. Arts, humanities, and sciences go hand in hand for a life worth living’. (Dawson 2020a) In addition, the context of Brexit, the loss of the Erasmus scheme, and cuts to foreign language provision at both school and Higher Education levels mean that the UK is further distancing itself from other European languages and cultures. What does all of this have to do with independent cinemas? They are one of the few spaces to enjoy European cinema in the UK, beyond home lm streaming services such as Netix and MUBI. Unfortunately, unlike several of our European neighbours, many in the UK view foreign language lm as pretentious and independent cinemas have a role to play in changing that. However, in order to do so, independent cinemas and similar arts organisations must consider best practice for access, equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and here lies the issue with the proposed New Filmhouse. After a four-month public consultation from March 2020, the Centre for the Moving Image submitted a full planning application for the proposed Festival Square building to Edinburgh City Council’s Planning Department in December 2020. On 3 January 2021, Robert Munro, Lecturer in Film and Media at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, tweeted a link to an article by Brian Ferguson in The Scotsman, with the headline ‘Former Edinburgh lm festival chief brands new £60m building ‘misguided.’ A former artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) has cast doubt on the viability of its proposed new £60 million building based in the city’s cultural quarter’. In it, Hannah McGill, who was the Artistic Director of EIFF for four years, says the new complex has long been management’s ‘preoccupation’ and states the new development is like ‘bringing umbrellas to a drought’ because of issues with the global lm industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic. (Ferguson 2020) Munro’s link to the article was accompanied by his tweet, ‘Interesting food for thought here, though I don’t wholly agree. Wld be interesting to dig into gures on screens/pop more. Certainly ppl in central Scotland attend cinema the most in the UK (joint with London). So, COVID excepting, the appetite is there.’ Filmmaker, Drew Travers responded to Munro: ‘I think the plans for this new Filmhouse is awesome and exciting. Where I take issue is with Filmhouse themselves saying how this will be accessible to all. I’m sure, physically it will. But I, as straight, white, working class Scot have never felt comfortable or fully accepted in the Filmhouse environment. Either by fellow patrons or sta. So I wonder how others from minority backgrounds would feel. I hope this new building could change that, but I doubt that given that it would be same management/board etc. And I know this isn’t what you or the article were discussing so apologies for that’. While access, equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) was not the concern of that particular article, it is of mine here. It is interesting that exclusion was the rst thing that came to a lmmaker’s mind in relation to Filmhouse. Munro responded to Travers, ‘No, but that’s very insightful and I’ve felt that way in the past too. And I know it is something that folks at the Filmhouse think about. @Dr_LeanneDawson wrote something great on this topic a few months back’, followed by a link to my article, ‘Culture in Crisis: A Guide to Access, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Festivals, Arts, and Culture. Specically for People with Disabilities, People who are Working-Class/in Poverty, and Parents/Carers’. (Dawson 2020a) Having been alerted to the mention of my name and work, I responded, ‘Thanks for sharing, Robert. And Drew, I agree that it’s not a very welcoming space for many reasons. There’s a real issue when too much focus is placed on building new glossy buildings rather than the people within them. It’s just like what’s happened with universities…’ As a Senior Lecturer in both Film Studies and German Studies in Edinburgh, my research considers LGBTQI+ and working-class representation onscreen and inclusion at arts events oscreen, including lm festivals. I am a lesbian, and a mother, who was raised working-class and in poverty, so I am incredibly aware how exclusionary many independent cinemas and similar arts spaces are. My professional experience of lm organisations includes a former role as Chair of the Scottish Queer International Film Festival, mentoring LGBTQI+ young people in lm curation for Cameo Cinema in Edinburgh, an invited jury member for international queer lm festival, MIX Copenhagen in 2019, and I have ‘worked’ (for free) with Filmhouse, both curating and presenting seasons of European cinema, and hosting one-o events, there. Having received £190,000 of Arts and Humanities Research Council funding for a current project exploring working-class queer representation in British lm and television, and how working-class audiences are welcomed (or not) into a range of lm festivals and events, it is my duty to speak up about culture that is often inaccessible to many working-class people and /or those in poverty, especially when that culture is publicly funded. When I won AHRC funding, I told an academic colleague how ambiguous I felt about it, because of how that large sum could help people in the real world. She replied about paying o a mortgage and I responded that I was thinking about food banks. This sums up the privilege in the arts and academia, and is something I continually strive to change. Places like independent cinemas need to shake their reputation of being pretentious and exclusionary and I wonder how a glossy new building will succeed in doing so? This article, like much of my work, aims to kick open the doors to arts, culture, and knowledge to make supposed high culture, indeed all culture, available to whoever enjoys it. But to know if you enjoy something you need to try it, meaning cultural organisations must be accessible and welcoming to all. In line with this, I am interested in centring people, and corresponding access and EDI policy, over places – especially expensive new buildings – which would be built when there will likely be numerous empty buildings within a short radius, due to the closure or permanent shift online of many businesses due to Covid-19 lockdowns. We need to know how the proposed new building will be used and what policy will be in place to ensure those most in need and most deserving, and not just the current Filmhouse regulars, will be at the heart of the project. Here, I expand my thoughts from the aforementioned rapid-re tweet to consider the proposed project in relation to access, equality, diversity, and inclusion matters at the old and New Filmhouse.