Earlier this month EM Media published its annual review of Economic Achievements 2008/09.
If you’re not already acquainted with it, EM Media is the Regional Screen Agency for the East Midlands, the Government Office Region encompassing the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland and Nottinghamshire, Robin Hood’s haunt of legend.
The review provides a fascinating snapshot of regional investment and returns, with evidence that the East Midlands derived clear benefit from the UK’s first sector-specific Venture Capital Loan Fund, the East Midlands Media Investments Fund (EMMI for short). Between 2006 and 2008 the Fund enabled EM Media to invest £6 million of European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) money in what it calls ‘the film and digital content sector’ (which includes TV and interactive media).
ERDF money is intended to stimulate economic development and regeneration in Europe’s least prosperous regions; which, if you think about it, is a macro-scale redistribution of wealth paralleling Robin Hood’s MO of taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Or, as the European Commission puts it with customary panache, ‘correcting imbalances between [Europe’s] regions.’
So, £6 million of European money went into EMMI and was invested across 65 projects, including 46 film investments. In addition, these projects attracted £33.2 million of leveraged funding (£19 million from private sources, and £14 million of other public finance).
The result is a portfolio of projects valued in 2008 at £3 million, with ongoing earning potential to help support future investments (the portfolio includes acclaimed features like This is England and Control). I note that Nicholas Winding Refn’s film Bronson, which received £250,000 from the Fund, has recently opened to strong reviews in the US, achieving 70.4% positive critical notices according to Movie Review Intelligence. And while we’re on the subject, The Damned United, funded in part by Screen Yorkshire and a recipient of in-kind support from EM Media, has had excellent reviews stateside- 80.1% positive- since opening last week in NY and LA. Top that off with An Education’s exceptional critical reception (92.2% positive reviews), and it’s been a good week for UK domestic features over the pond.
Back to EMMI and, according to EM Media, 41 permanent and 563 temporary jobs are also directly attributable to the Fund between 2006 and 2008, along with less directly measurable (but arguably no less important) assistance for 262 companies in the region. Taking all these factors together, EM Media has valued the Fund’s economic benefit to the region at around £70 million- a notable achievement worthy of an Alan-a-Dale ballad.
EMMI is not the only funding strand managed by EM Media. The agency also invests RIFE lottery and grant-in-aid money in film projects and organisations on behalf of the UK Film Council, along with funds from the East Midlands Development Agency and other sources.
The upshot is that in 2008/09, EM Media invested in a total of eight feature films and one feature documentary, including local girl Samantha Morton’s directorial debut The Unloved. Three externally produced features also filmed in the region, which means that nearly one in five (18%) UK domestic features were made in the East Midlands in the course of the year. Not bad considering it has no permanent studio infrastructure.
The region saw a 6% increase in film shooting days (which have risen from fewer than 25 in 2003 to around 300 in 2008) and film and TV production in the region created employment for nearly 900 freelance crew. EM Media calculates these productions brought inward investment to the value of £16 million to the region in that year alone.
The question remains whether these levels of investment and success are sustainable given the completion of EMMI’s three year term, the squeeze on public finances that is likely to see a fall in RIFE money and uncertainties over regional development funding under a future Conservative administration. We’ll doubtless find out in next year’s review, and those that follow.
Anyway, to end here's my favourite Robin Hood-themed story, which issues from the early 1990s and concerns a young couple planning their wedding.
Riding high in the charts at that time was Bryan Adams’s theme tune to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and being impetuous romantics of unsound mind the couple request the track to accompany the bride up the aisle.
The big day arrives, but, alas, all does not go to plan due to a misunderstanding on the part of the befuddled organist. Instead of Bryan Adams's ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You’, the bride is forced to proceed up the aisle, past wide-eyed friends and family, to the strains of Dick James’s theme tune to The Adventures of Robin Hood (‘Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen…’).
Needless to say, there was not a dry eye in the house.
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