Digital Womens Network

Here's his speech in full. And you can find out how nfm spent its funds last year at the link below

northernmedia/NFM_Review

" I want to talk to you tonight about the value of Northern Film & Media and its work, about the challenges that face us and about how we will be evolving to better meet those challenges.
Let me look at value first.

Our Annual Review is available for you to pick up tonight.  In it you will find an explanation of the range of partnership activity we undertake every year.

• the projects we fund
• the investment we create 
• the skills we build
• the ideas we develop
• the audiences we help educate and grow
• the productions we bring into the region.

You will also find a list of the 58 Key Performance Indicators we use to report on how we have achieved our six objectives every year.

I know it’s only CEO’s who are ever proud of Performance Indicators, it’s sad.  So whilst I would like to bore you rigid by explaining each one of them, I won’t.  But I will give you a couple that I feel are important –

From European and Regional sources Northern Film & Media is given about £675,000 a year to invest in the North East.

In the last year, with that 675,000 of regional investment, we helped generate £15m worth of investment into the media sector here.

Or put another way we multiply the regional money we are given by over 20 times.

That’s impressive

         We do that on Overheads at 9%

I think that is tremendous value and I’m extremely proud of that.

I’m also extremely proud of the Northern Film & Media staff, who, over the last three years, have helped build a valuable and expert resource for the region.

It’s their professional judgment, energy, dedication, enthusiasm, integrity and challenging approach that has helped build Northern Film & Media into a robust organisation capable of delivering long lasting social and economic value to the North East.

So thank you Northern Film & Media staff.

I think it’s clear from the film and the rest of our work that there is an intrinsic value in what we do.  Without needing to measure anything, we know that people respond positively to the projects we help fund.

There is an increase in confidence within the sector, there’s a vibrancy that exists as a result of the increased amount of work.  Being involved in moving image work through making or watching or both, is an enjoyable often uplifting experience,

it can also produce a real sense of identity and community. 

So it has real cultural value.

There is also a real instrumental value in what we do, which can be both social and economic.  New jobs and new companies created or time spent by kids off the streets making animation projects. These are important outcomes that we can measure, and we do.

There is also a crucial institutional value in Northern Film & Media and the way it operates.  There is an inherent level of professional expertise,

public accountability, trust, fairness, value for money and national advocacy that exists within the organisation. 

Put simply no matter how you track or report on the value, be it through case studies, or perfomance indicators, Northern Film & Media has real value.  It makes a real difference.  The work we do in partnership with you really does affect people’s lives.

Together we have built an important and powerful regional resource.

Now let’s look to the future where there are some significant challenges

European funding is rapidly disappearing, it’s this money that we used for our creating success scheme.

We are very pleased London has won the Olympics in 2012, but it will be supported with lottery money and is likely to suck in 15% of existing lottery funding.

We have a region with 20% less screens per head than the rest of the UK.

There’s less regional hours of non news being made by Tyne Tees. 

There will be less feature film production in the UK as the tax incentives sort themselves out.

It’s a challenging economic environment…..but…we’re used to that.

On the positive side:

We have broadcasters increasing their out of London spend and taking a new interest in the regions both as locations and sources of ideas, stories and talent.

The BBC’s move to Manchester should have an impact on the whole of the North as more commissioning decisions and spend takes place in the North.

In One North East, we have a robust Regional Development Agency with an increasingly mature Regional Economic Strategy that fully supports the development of the commercial creative industries.  In partnership with One North East, Northern Film & Media  are examining the feasibility of a development fund for network television and a fund that will invest in the intellectual property being developed by the regions commercial creative industries. 

One North East fully understands the real opportunities that exist to build the creative industries here, and Northern Film & Media  is very proud to be leading the drive to build those industries.

What all that means for us and therefore for you, is that more focus is required.

It’s a more challenging environment and to survive and succeed within it will be harder. 

So what changes will we be making?  How will we evolve to thrive in the new environment?

Clarity and focus are key.

To help bring clarity and focus to our funding, over the next three years we will be concentrating even more intently on projects that have either an economic impact or a social impact.

And the focus will be on growth, development, innovation, competition and value.

Let me be clear on what we mean by social impact.

Projects with social impact are often empowering, allowing individuals and communities to frame their own world from behind the camera or tell their own stories from in front of it.

They are projects that improve accessibility to film often for minority or excluded groups.

They are projects that connect people and often reinforce a sense of unity, identity and community.  They explore different cultures offering a wide range of film and moving image to a wide range of audiences.

They are about engagement, participation and education and are mostly motivated by considerations other than profit.

Now let me be very clear on what we mean by economic impact.

Our mission statement charges us with developing a vibrant and sustainable media sector. 

We do now have a vibrant media sector in the North East. 

There is a lot of activity, growing confidence and national and international awards being won.

The other part of our mission statement is about sustainability.  What do we mean by sustainability?  Let me tell you the things it is not.

It is not about just surviving

It is not about a hand to mouth lifestyle business

It is not about doing the same thing every year

It’s not about taking the same script to the same festival three years running to talk to the same people.

It’s not about relying solely on a regional economy

It is about being competitive

It is about being commercial

It is about growth

It is about business development

It is about taking part in the national and international market place

It is about starting out with something that is good and ending up with something that is even better.

We already have some excellent companies, with huge experience, winning awards all over the world. But In five years time we must have a range of companies competing internationally, who are robust, established businesses,

able to attract private investment to support continual growth.

This requires us to evolve our funding model beyond isolated project funding and into an area where we are strategic investment partners with the sophisticated regional media businesses.

To be clear, our challenge to you, and it will be a challenge, if you are to create an economic impact, our challenge to you, is to compete, to grow and drive into new national and international markets with new content.

This will require you to be commercial, innovative, creative, confident and very well connected.

If you’re up for that challenge, if you are ready for that change, if you are ready to have a much bigger economic impact on the region, then the public money we distribute is for you.

If you can’t do that, then we can’t help you.  Public money targeted at creating economic impact in the creative industries will not fund people or companies

to stay in the same place doing the same thing.

So there will be more money for companies who are up for the challenge

 and less money for those that are not.

Project funding will remain at the heart of our talent development strategy, we will always be hear to encourage and grow talented newcomers and give them the opportunity to show the world what they can do.

We will also, of course, continue to offer a fantastic range of services, we will be spending on your training to help you be as good as you can be, we will be putting on talks, events, and screenings to keep you in touch with events and thinking in the industry, we will continue to offer free script reading and reporting for all of you writing scripts and treatments, to ensure we are discovering the best new film and television writers in the region. We will continue to support mentoring opportunities,

marketing trips, cv advice and careers surgeries. 

These are things that everyone can benefit from.

We will also continue to work hard to bring more production to the region,

not only to provide work for local crew and income for local facilities and services,

but to put the urban and rural landscapes of our region on the world map.

So let me be clear about my messege to you tonight.

Northern Film & Media has worked hard to create a vibrant sector, that work will continue. 

Together we have built a robust and effective organisation in Northern Film & Media,

one that creates real value for the North East.

We’ve worked well in partnership with a range of film makers and groups to create solid social impact in the region with the outreach work we do and the audience development activity we support. That work has been noticed on a national level and that work will also continue.

There are some significant challenges ahead and we are all going to have to evolve.

There is a huge depth and breadth to the skills and creativity that exists in this region’s media practitioners and their companies, and

we will continue to work in partnership with those people and their companies,

but we have issued you with a challenge tonight,

A challenge to plan for a commercial future,

to plan your growth,

to be more competetive on a world stage,

to fully develop your businesses to have a much greater economic impact and help build the industrial success of the commercial creative industries in this region.

And do think about what you have seen and heard here tonight. 

We will be helping to make a bigger social and economic impact in the North East and we want to do that with you.

We are moving on, and we hope very much that  you will come with us".

SPEECH DELIVERED OCTOBER 28 2005, GATESHEAD