We’re a bit different from your average production company because you can’t be what you can’t see. We get to do something we love every day and contribute to something vital to our society. If someone has talent and a great work ethic it should be unacceptable if they are stopped by factors like their geography, class, ethnicity or gender, yet less than 20% of the Film and Television workforce are female, less than 12.5% are working class, less than 4% are from Black Asian and Minority Ethnic groups, less than 6% have a disability, with 55% of feature films shot in London and only 13% of UK feature films having a female director (even when ROI on those films is higher…). And the Creative Industries are growing. In Northamptonshire we lay the foundations for a film industry based on merit alone. • Our Northampton Film Festival provides a high profile, accessible ‘shop window’ to the Film Industry, locally and nationally, and its multitude of career paths, starting from a Primary School audience. • A free year-round Academy for young people while in Education 14-21yrs in Northants providing invaluable set experience on our feature films shooting each year in the summer holidays. In the last 5 years we’ve engaged over 300 volunteers of all ages, 218 disadvantaged young people with the support of BBC Children in Need and hundreds more local school, college and university students through short film projects and work experience. We had over 700 admissions to the Northampton Film Festival pilot, 49% of which were new to Screen Northants and are currently running our first ScreenSkills Mentoring programme which has 23 local new entrants paired up with an industry mentor.