The BFI has announced £11.85m funding over three years to support skills development and training across the UK’s key production hubs.
“With the UK continuing to attract significant levels of film and high-end TV production spend – reaching £6.8 billion in 2025 – building and maintaining skilled and representative local crew bases across the country remains vital,” the BFI said.
“This BFI National Lottery funding supports organisations working within the UK’s major production hubs to take the lead on developing and delivering below-the-line skills and training for their areas.”
Informed initially by the 2022 BFI Skills Review and developed in response to below-the-line production skills gaps and shortages across the UK screen sector, the BFI Skills Clusters Fund will continue to enable lead organisations to work collaboratively with local industry, education, and training providers.
Taking a localised approach, the Fund will continue to support seven regional Clusters to “identify local skills needs, strengthen regional skills data and evidence, deliver tailored training to new and existing workers, and create clearer routes into local work opportunities in film and television production”.
The funding directly addresses the BFI National Lottery Strategy core objective to support a workforce that is both skilled and representative of the UK population.
For each Cluster, funding is awarded to a lead delivery partner who will work in partnership with other organisations and leverage additional local funding to maximise the impact of BFI National Lottery funding.
To date, seven BFI Skills Clusters have been awarded a total of £9m over three years.
Continued investment in the BFI Skills Clusters seeks to consolidate and build on the work from the previous funding period, which saw over 26,000 people benefitting from training provision between April 2023 and September 2025, 291 education partners engaged, and over 900 industry/employer stakeholder relationships fostered across the period.
This has included mentoring programmes, paid traineeships and support for new entrants.
Going forwards, there will also be CPD programmes to support the development and retention of mid-career workers, and training in newly developing areas such as sustainability and the effective and ethical use of AI.
The Clusters also will increase focus on engaging working-class participants, due to “significant underrepresentation” in the sector, and on upskilling the existing workforce alongside continuing to support new entrants into the sector against identified needs.
In addition to funding the existing Skills Clusters, a further £2.85m will be invested in broadening the geographical reach of the programme, introducing further BFI Skills Clusters where there is evidence of a need to build strong crew bases. The BFI will open the additional Skills Clusters funding for applications from early July 2026.
Sara Whybrew, director of skills and workforce development at the BFI, said: “The first three years of the BFI Skills Clusters has shown us that supporting localised training and work-based-learning opportunities is vital to building a workforce that better reflects local populations and ensuring our production hubs have ready access to the breadth of skills needed to support both domestic and inward-investment production.
“Earning and spending in the same place is good for local economies, and enabling more people to pursue, develop, and sustain a career in screen on their doorstep also makes the sector accessible to a greater diversity of people.
“We’d like to thank the Skills Clusters for the impactful work they have achieved since 2023, and we look forward to the next three years and to welcoming new delivery partners as we grow the portfolio and geographical footprint of the Clusters.”
Alongside the BFI Skills Clusters, BFI National Lottery Skills funding will continue to support a pipeline of UK-wide interventions between 2026-2029, many with localised delivery models to maximise engagement, reach, and representation, including Careers and Progression funding, Young Creatives funding, BFI Film Academy, and the Good Work Programme for Screen fund.
