“The Cinema for All Annual Conference was a first for us, as a new film society. It was a great way to meet fellow cinema enthusiasts, gain new knowledge, celebrate all the hard work that community cinema volunteers do and most importantly it provided us with real encouragement and support which is essential for any fledgling group who are finding their feet.

Being immersed in all things cinema for a whole weekend gave us time to really reflect on what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and how we could learn and improve. We bought back lots of ideas, particularly in relation to programming, which was a word we kept hearing but one that we’d never even used ourselves. We are now going to work out how we might develop an annual programme rather than just thinking a couple of months ahead which will ensure that we not only cater better for our diverse audience but that we provide them with the ability to plan ahead and think about which films they want to attend throughout the year.

We were really inspired by the different approaches that other clubs take, some were all about providing less frequent but very special immersive experiences, others catered for niche audiences and some were simply passionate about providing a platform for independent film makers as an alternative to mainstream cinema. I think we are a little bit of all these, but our main driver is about providing a social opportunity in a dispersed rural community that doesn’t have easy access to many other services – maybe this is something they could cover in future events.

Fortunately, through social media, we can now stay in touch with some of the great film societies we connected with and keep an eye on the ideas and programming that they’re doing. We hadn’t really looked further afield until now so I think this will really benefit us when determining our own programme and events.”

“Attending the ICO Screenings Days at the BFI Southbank was an amazing opportunity to participate in. I was part of another event in which we met other young people who also run their own cinemas, whether part of a university programme or just for the community, which was beneficial to my understanding of how to run a successfully programmed event. This being very useful as I volunteer to run a pop-up cinema which aims to offer an affordable and fun experience for the community. The sessions were very engaging and allowed us to express our ideas with one another, allowing us to create a discussion which was very informative. It also brought attention as to how important it is for us young people to have voices as we also have ideas on events which will be successful, and appeal to a wide range of audience members.

Not only did we attend the sessions regarding the exhibition of films, we were also given the opportunity to watch films in the ICO Screening Days. With a wide range of diversity within the film choices, the event was appealing to many different audiences, allowing us to make choices as to which style/genre of film we wanted to watch. Both myself and another volunteer from our pop-cinema/film festival tried to watch a wide range of films, this consisting of short films, documentaries and full-length feature films.

The whole experience of attending the ICO screening days was amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed watching and discussing films, learning new ways to attract a wider audience and create programmes with more diverse film choices”.

“This Way Up was a really great experience for myself and my organisation. It was a really inspirational 2 days with great speakers and panels. It’s the first time I have attended a This Way Up event and unsure how much I was going to take away from the event.  As it turned out it was hard to know what to choose to go along to once it got started as there was so much that was relevant to our charity. I took pages of notes from some sessions and refer back to them still on a regular basis. The 2 days have influenced change in my organisation from the new business plan to decisions on flooring!  Was really useful to hear the similarities and differences in people’s experiences during and outside of the sessions as well.  I would definitely recommend attending to anyone thinking of going along to the next event.”

“Headline figures can disguise a wide variation in the performance of venues – an average of 51 people per show. One fascinating finding is that there is no correlation between the size of a community and the size of audience attracted by its community cinema.  A wide range of other critical success factors are in play.”

“This was the first film festival I’d attended and it was an incredible experience. I felt privileged to have had access to exciting, relevant films, and to be able to bring many of them home to the audiences of the film club.

One of the things that really excited and impressed me was the platforming and position of female film makers. It’s incredibly refreshing that time is taken to curate film screenings made by women who are largely ignored in the film industry. I was particularly excited to meet director Lana Wilson, who I greatly admire.”

In September, 2017, Wicked Young Programmers, Lacey Small, Scarlett and Natasha, spent the day at the Welsh National Opera‘s screening of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ interviewing audience members, to create this short film below with Liam Martin. 

Wicked Young Programmers was created in partnership with Wicked International Youth Film Festival as part of the BFI Young FAN project. Wicked links up with students in their rural local area of Rhyl to offer them the chance to to run the Wicked Cinema and gain skills to have a job in the media industry.          

Cinemas across the UK recognised World Alzheimer’s Month, with dementia friendly cinema events throughout September 2017 and beyond.The movement was led by Film Hub Wales with film screenings supported by the eight BFI Film Audience Network (FAN) Hubs across the UK, who provide dementia-friendly guidance, training and support to cinema operators.

On September 22, 2017, Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, organised a day of film, information sessions, awareness raising and more to celebrate World Alzheimer’s Month, which included a dementia-friendly screening of ‘The Sound of Music’, with warm up by Goldies choir and an interval with tea and biscuits.

The course was an widespread overview of cinema exhibition, consisting of several different sessions covering topics such as distribution, exhibition, commercial programming, curatorial, marketing, programming for your audience, finding audiences, festivals, diversity and much more.

I learnt that there are several things worth keeping in mind when promoting titles in the future. Creating partnerships with media outlets is important, this can include freelance journalists, and even local businesses and community groups. This is especially relevant in North Wales due to a spread out population so it makes sense to join forces in the local area.

Market research is important. Explore the venue with customers eyes to understand the customer journey, demographics, programme, physical space, ease of booking – being honest about what can be done immediately, in the future, or not at all.

There are nuances to targeting to audiences. Striking the balance of providing specific, strand-based content, whilst also growing audiences and encouraging more diverse or ‘risky’ viewings.

When considering programming you can use archive and AMI films to complement and diversify existing programme, being creative, providing context, blending with the curatorial.

“When we started programming films for the Festival last year, we found it difficult and limiting working with full-time cinemas. They were expensive to hire, but even more importantly the windows of opportunities to screen extra films around their regular programming was limiting. This was unresponsive to our festival’s needs. We also needed to hire the equipment from South Wales.

Then we got in contact with The Little Theatre, which offered an affordable and flexible venue. They were also keen to see films screened again after a gap of over 50 years.”