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Our Work2020-11-30T12:12:54+00:00

Our Work

Women continue to struggle for representation across the film industry globally. One social barrier particularly affects women, although it applies to everyone: Family vs. Film.

At Raising Films we believe conversations make change happen, and we want things to change. We are losing too much talent to the choice many filmmakers are forced to make, between being a parent and making films. We don’t believe this choice is necessary, but rather a product of social and economic conditions, and we want to start a conversation about how change can be made for filmmakers who want to have a family and continue their careers.

This is about development, sustainability and diversity. Raising Films aims to address one of the issues that prevents many female filmmakers from pursuing their careers, to enable filmmakers with families to keep working and feel supported during demanding times in their personal lives, and to challenge at a structural level the demands the film industry makes of all of us.

Raising Films aims to provide information, education and solutions and our work focuses on:

  • Enabling financial assistance for child and elder care.
  • Encouraging industry-wide adoption of flexible working and access to child and/or elder care.
  • Formalising a way to combat discrimination.
  • Normalising conversations around caring commitments with employers.

We put these ambitions into action by working with industry partners and the film and television community and lobby to to ensure these and other solutions are enacted.

  • A view of a garden from an upstairs window. A lawn, trees and the dale in the distance.

Creative Residency: March 2024

January, 2024|

We are back with more residencies! If you are a UK-based writer, director or producer with caring responsibilities, and you’d like a week in a cottage in the Yorkshire Dales to get some focussed work [...]

RENT-A-BIFA!* (Because we’re broke)

February, 2022|

Need a gorgeous award to look glam in your next social media post? Or want something extra-special for your office to impress Zoom callers? Or something in your loo to motivate you to JUST [...]

  • The image shows Raising Films founders Nicky Bentham, Jessica Levick and So Mayer, and Raising Films ambassadors Alice Lowe and Manjinder Virk, holding the BIFA Special Jury Award on the red carpet at the 24th British Independent Film Awards. Nicky is wearing an ankle-length floral patchwork dress, Jess is wearing a sequinned jacket and black dress, So is wearing a grey waistcoat with black shirt and trousers, Alice is wearing a floor-length red dress, and Manjinder is wearing a floor-length blue lace dress.

Raising Films Awarded BIFA’s Special Jury Prize

December, 2021|

On Sunday 5 December, Raising Films attended the 24th British Independent Film Awards live at Old Billingsgate, where we were honoured to receive the Special Jury Prize. Awarded by the BIFA Main Jury, which [...]

How We Work Now – our report is live

October, 2021|

This week, we publish our survey-based report How We Work Now, highlighting the urgent need for collective action addressing the issues faced by screen industries’ carers and parents, exacerbated by COVID-19 yet long pre-dating [...]

READ MORE POSTS ABOUT OUR WORK

Research, Reports, Recommendations

2020-12-16T17:46:19+00:00

We Need To Talk About Caring

This piece of industry research from Raising Films (supported by Carers UK) surveyed people who are working, or who have worked, in the screen industries and who currently have caring responsibilities or have had caring responsibilities in the past.

2020-12-16T17:46:56+00:00

Raising Our Game

Raising Our Game is our most wide-reaching piece of research – a report that examines and underlines the effects that the casualisation of labour combined with a lack of knowledge around rights and best practice, and often underlined by the assumption that working in the sector is a ‘privilege’, have had on our workforce.

2021-03-25T15:08:39+00:00

Making It Possible survey

In 2015 Raising Films started a conversation about the challenges faced by parents and carers working in film and television. Now, we’re proud to present what we’ve learned with the results of our survey — the first nationwide look into the impact of caring on career development across the industry.

MAKING IT POSSIBLE survey – research & findings

78%

Respondents were 78% female and 21% male, and the survey observed that women tended to carry more of the burden as carers.

79%

79% of parents and carers told us that their caring labour had a negative impact on their work in the UK film and television industries.

63%

63% of respondents work freelance or are self-employed, and financial uncertainty is a major concern.