Scotland unveils £1 billion vision for creation of 6,000 film and TV industry jobs

More support has been pledged for home-grown film and TV talent and productions

A new blueprint for the future of film and TV in Scotland is to prioritise supporting more home-grown talent and productions, creating more studio space, ensuring filmmaking becomes part of the school curriculum and providing access to cinema screenings all over the country.

National agency Screen Scotland is aiming to boost the value of the industry from around £617 million to £1 billion within the next six years and result in more than 6,000 new jobs created.

It has pledged to step up efforts to attract more big-money films and drama series to film, while encouraging the development of more home-grown hits by writers, directors and producers permanently based in Scotland.

Filmmaker Andrew Cumming made his debut feature Out of Darkness in the Highlands.

Key aims include building up a year-round “pipeline” of productions so there is more confidence about being able to have a “sustainable career” in Scotland, encouraging new start-up companies and businesses to establish a long-term presence, and helping local producers develop new projects of “scale and ambition”.

Screen Scotland wants to build on recent successes like the feature film adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s novel The Outrun, which was filmed in Orkney, writer-director Charlotte Wells’ award-winning debut Aftersun, and director Andrew Cumming’s horror Out of Darkness, his first feature film, which was made in the Highlands.

Scottish playwright David Harrower has written a new TV series on the Lockerbie bombing, which Colin Firth has been filming in Scotland, while Perth-born filmmaker John MacLean is the writer and director of new survival thriller Tornado, which Jack Lowden and Tim Roth are making in Scotland.

The new blueprint envisages Scotland as both a “centre of global production”, as well a nation with its own “vibrant, confident film and screen culture”.

Saoirse Ronan leads the cast of The Outrun, the film based on Amy Liptrot's acclaimed memoir, sees her play a woman returning to her native Orkney to try to leave her troubled life of drug and alcohol addiction in London behind her. Picture: Roy Imer

Isabel Davis, executive director of Screen Scotland, said: “We’ve really nailed our colours to the mast in terms of the growth we want to see in production activity and increasing the value of sector to £1bn by 2030. But the change we really want is for that growth to happen with productions that have started their life in Scotland.

"Ultimately we want to have a busy year-round production schedule so that people can see that the industry feels secure and sustainable in the long term, and they can choose to live and work in the industry in Scotland.”

The strategy highlights recent research showing that over half of Britain’s school-leavers were interested in working in TV and film, but only 18 per cent believed it was a realistic option.

Screen Scotland wants to “embed” film and screen in the school curriculum by building on a pilot that has already seen “screen educators” working with teachers in Argyll and Bute, Dundee, Edinburgh, Inverness and Shetland.

Lead actors Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal, with Charlotte Wells, the writer and director of Aftersun, which opened the 2022 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Picture: Getty/Euan Cherry

The blueprint states: “We want every child and young person to have the opportunity to make a film or programme during their school years. Only by doing this will they feel filmmaking is within their reach. It is how we will discover and develop our talented and skilled people, and how they might discover and begin to realise their potential as filmmakers.”

A “cornerstone” of the new vision is to ensure there are no parts of Scotland left without “easy access” to cinema provision, by supporting community-run venues, arts centres and mobile cinemas like the Screen Machine.

The vision states: “These spaces provide not just cultural and economic benefits, but social, health and wellbeing, and educational benefits. Maintaining this provision and using it to inspire a new generation of screen talent across Scotland is key to our role.”