Film Bang 1976-2020 – resilience and sustainability for freelance careers in the screen industries

This Report gathers the evidence from our 2020 research project investigating freelance working in the Scottish film and television sector over the past four decades. The Industrial Strategy (UK Government, 2017) and the Bazalgette Report into the Creative Industries (2017) have identified the need to support the development of creative clusters in other regions outside London and the south east of England in order that the creative industries grow more equally across the UK. The Scottish screen cluster has been examined previously with the focus on the independent production companies located in a Glasgow ‘agglomeration’ (Turok, 2003). Our research focuses on the Scottish screen sector freelance workforce. It examines how a nascent cluster of freelancers were vital to the establishment of a regional hub for film and television production. It goes on to examine the barriers and challenges these freelancers face in order to sustain lasting careers. We assess how these have impacted in the past and how they are currently impeding growth in this regional sub-sector of the film and television industry. Drawing on the historical case study of the Film Bang directory of freelancers in Scotland our research assesses the barriers and challenges from the bottom-up, seeking evidence from the experiences of individual members of this workforce and identifying ways that some freelancers have successfully sustained long-lasting careers