Memorandum submitted by Yorkshire Film
Archive
We are writing to you in response to your second
call for evidence to set before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee
on the subject of the nation's heritage.
We write to highlight the issues associated
with a particular aspect of our heritage—that preserved
in moving image form and which is of direct relevance to regional
communities throughout the UK. This is an extremely powerful and
increasingly important historical resource that is currently in
crisis because of the absence of a relatively modest level of
funding that would sustain the eight regional film archives.
Evidence outlining the case for such funding
has also been submitted to you from the UK Film Archive Forum.
The purpose of our communication is to provide a case study of
a highly regarded regional film archive which, despite considerable
investment from bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund and the
Regional Development Agency over the past few years, and despite
careful management and forward planning, finds itself in a precarious
position because of the lack of core revenue funding streams.
Our contention is that the current situation
where organisations such as ours receive insufficient core funding
and are forced to rely almost entirely on project funding leads
to instability, the inefficient use of resources, both human and
financial, and threatens to squander the investment that has already
been put in place. A relatively small level of central support
would produce stability and unlock a range of social benefits
that would be highly cost-effective.
BACKGROUND
The Yorkshire Film Archive is one of eight public
access regional film archives in the UK. It holds collections
of around 7,000 titles, along with 8,000 items of regional news
from the BBC collection. Material held in the collections dates
from 1896 to the present day, illustrating over one hundred years
of life in the region. They show the industries that shaped our
landscape and working lives; the communities that have grown and
changed; the cultures and traditions that have been celebrated
over decades, and the way generations of Yorkshire people have
grown up, gone to school, lived, worked and played.
These collections are in constant use by communities,
by museums and libraries, by the wider as well as formal curriculum
education sector, and in the commercial sector by broadcasters.
The Yorkshire Film Archive is an independent
incorporated charity, founded in 1986. It is housed in purpose-built
premises in the centre of York. These premises, opened in 2003,
were built with funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Yorkshire
Forward, the regional development agency: an investment of nearly
£1 million. The Archive currently employs eight members of
staff, who provide a region of over 5.4 million people with a
creative, efficient and long-term resource.
Each year the YFA delivers programmes directly
to audiences of over 6,000, and provides indirect access to tens
of thousands through its displays and installations in museums
and galleries. In addition, it reaches far wider audiences through
its partnership television programmes such as the ITV Yorkshire
series The Way We Were which attract audiences averaging 700,000
weekly over eight week periods. The YFA is currently in production
of the fifth The Way We Were series, to be broadcast from January
2007.
All of these audiences evidence the clear interest
shown in film archive footage which relates directly back to the
communities of the region. The breadth of users also demonstrates
how the content of moving image collections can be widely utilised
across the cultural and creative industries sectors.
It costs in the region of £300k per year
to maintain this service, which includes the long term care and
conservation of the collections, the maintenance of the building,
the facilities and the staff, and the delivery of pro-active access
programmes such as those noted above, We believe that this provides
clear value for money in terms of long term preservation of the
collections, and providing access to our moving image heritage.
On the face of it, the Yorkshire Film Archive
is seen as a success story and has been quoted as such by the
Heritage Lottery Fund, the UK Film Council, Yorkshire Museums,
Libraries and Archives Council and Screen Yorkshire. However,
its success in attracting major project funding, despite its benefits,
masks the reality that the Archive cannot continue to deliver
at its present level, let alone develop, unless clear and sustainable
levels of core revenue funding are agreed. Currently the Yorkshire
Film Archive only receives £45,000 annually from the UK Film
Council's Regional Investment Fund for England. The entire regional
film archive sector received only £256,000 in 2003-04.
It is clear that no organisation can deliver
or hope to be sustained on such pitiful levels of funding, and
in response to the inquiry we would like to make the following
points on the issues you have raised:
What should DCMS identify as priorities in the
forthcoming White Paper?
Access to heritage and the position of heritage
as a cultural asset in the community
Regional collections should be given parity
of esteem with national collections. The regions collectively
serve a population of over 39 million people and, because regional
organisations are smaller and clearly focussed, they are often
better placed to deliver effectively to their own communities,
enhancing both the film archive sector's objectives, and the DCMS's
objectives:
Children and Young People: increasing access to
cultural and educational opportunities
The Yorkshire Film Archive has developed a comprehensive
Learning and Access strategy, and is already delivering to a range
of education providers, from curriculum based packages, to taught
HE modules, from after-school workshops to children's film festivals.
Communities: enriching individual lives and strengthening
communities—particularly by encouraging cultural participation
from diverse and socially excluded groups
In terms of national and regional identity,
the use of the moving image is probably one of the most resonant
and powerful contributors to an understanding of how people's
identities develop. The Yorkshire Film Archive is already aware
of how much their regional audiences value their work, and the
demand for community film shows and events continues to grow.
People have an almost universal desire to see their lives—more
accurately, the lives of their parents and grandparents—as
captured on moving images. Seeing towns and villages fifty or
eighty years ago, people's workplaces, their homes, their sports,
weddings, and holidays—there simply is no more powerful
medium than the moving image to convey collective and individual
memories.
The Yorkshire Film Archive has ongoing programmes
of community outreach work; its collections illustrate the shared
identities at both local and regional level and have real meaning
to the people who live there. Every week, the YFA gives presentations,
or supplies material, often to groups that have little or no other
access to film provision—for example, in rural communities,
for elderly people, or in community centres on housing estates.
Economy: maximising the economic contribution
and productivity of the creative industries
The Yorkshire Film Archive is now in its fourth
year of partnership working with the broadcast community, delivering
its fifth series based on archive footage, which, despite the
cuts in regional programmes, continues to be commissioned, as
it attracts high viewing figures.
Funding, with particular reference to the adequacy
of the budget for English Heritage and for museums and galleries,
the impact of London 2012 on Lottery funding for heritage projects
For the film archive sector, there are specific
difficulties with the current funding structure. The regional
film archives are funded by the UK Film Council whose major commitment
to the preservation of moving image heritage is their grant to
the British Film Institute, which operates the National Film and
Television Archive. The UK Film Council, the BFI and the regional
film archives wish to pursue a National Strategy that delivers
on preserving and providing access nationally, and operates efficiently.
But this is not possible without adequate core funding to the
regions, and if these funding levels are not addressed quickly,
none of this will be possible. Without additional investment,
the opportunity for a true national sector, which gives everyone
the chance to learn from and enjoy their own moving image heritage,
will be lost.
Currently the regional archives receive an average
of £32,000 each. They simply cannot develop or deliver from
this base. Several, including the Yorkshire Film Archive, face
closure from March 2007.
But there is a real moment to change the current
landscape. All the sector partners—the UK Film Council,
the BFI and the regional film archives are working towards a clear
national strategy. The regions need stabilising quickly in order
to deliver on this strategy.
The amount needed to do this - for the whole
English Regional Film Archive sector, is only £1.4 million
per year, to deliver a first class, joined-up sector.
The Yorkshire Film Archive has drawn down a
total of £2 million additional investment over the last three
years to construct its new premises, build its collections, develop
strong regional partnerships and deliver to new audiences, and
to work strategically regional and national priorities and agendas.
Most of this has been achieved through project funding of one
kind or another that comes to an end in March 2007.
A significant proportion of the Director's energies
are directed towards securing funding to enable the Yorkshire
Film Archive to continue. The Archive finds it particularly difficult
to secure funding for certain key activities, such as day-to-day
administration and financial control, including the increasing
level of statutory obligation, which can be rarely covered by
project funding.
A modest level of core funding for Yorkshire
in the region of £150,000-£200,000 per annum would enable
the Archive to deliver effectively on all the key DCMS objectives,
and give it the opportunity to develop new pan-regional and national
initiatives with real potential for drawing down significant new
investment into the sector, for example from European funding
streams, joint commercial ventures, lottery funding etc.
Whether there is an adequate supply of professionals
with conservation skills; the priority placed by planning authorities
on conservation; and means of making conservation expertise more
accessible to planning officers, councillors and the general public.
As it stands, the current situation leads to
a waste of resources, financial and human. The Yorkshire Film
Archive, along with regional colleagues, finds it almost impossible
to plan any CPD programmes for staff, as most are on short term
one-year contracts. Without security for the core staff, the archive
itself experiences difficulties in planning long term conservation
programmes for the care of its collections—the basis of
its work.
The Archive, like others in the UK, employs
people who have trained at University level for some years, investing
their own time and money, and with substantial investment from
government. Such well-trained specialists should surely be able
to operate in an environment that makes the best and most cost-effective
use of their hard-earned skills and provides a realistic career
structure that professionals in other fields expect and enjoy.
If there are no suitable openings for such people then inevitably
the supply will diminish, the training courses disappear and the
expertise in preserving, documenting and interpreting the moving
image in the UK will be increasingly hard to source.
The provision of adequate funding would provide
security within a sector that by its very nature is there to preserve
an increasingly important aspect of our national heritage in perpetuity.
Without it, it is highly likely that it will be lost forever.
The remit and effectiveness of DCMS, the Museums,
Libraries and Archives Council and other relevant organisations
in representing cultural interests inside and outside Government.
The regional film archives currently sit within
the Film Unit of DCMS. Yet much of their core work—conservation,
preservation, curation, is more closely aligned to museums, libraries
and archives colleagues. This can be addressed at operational
levels through good professional exchange of strategic agendas
and information at both national and regional level—for
example the UK Film Council invited both MLA and NCA on to the
UK Film Heritage Group, where they play an active role. MLA Yorkshire
sits as advisers to the Yorkshire Film Archive Board of Trustees.
However, in terms of funding, regional film
archives have not been a priority within the film sector and,
because of this, the problems of sustainability have been much
more difficult to address. We would ask the DCMS to give due attention
to a sector, which, for just a small amount of investment, can
deliver effectively across all the objectives of the Department.
19 September 2006
| 
