We’ve submitted our response to The Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) consultation on National Lottery ‘Good Cause’ funding.

Key points we raised include:

Supporting equal access across the UK
We support equal access to opportunity for people across the UK, but current distribution does not yet deliver this for London.

Headline figures overstate London’s advantage, concealing a much harder environment for emerging and independent talent – a big-budget production shooting in a London borough does not help a first-time local filmmaker finance a short or a debut feature.

We ask that spreading investment more equally should not mean diminishing the capital and for the test to remain where a pound of Lottery money delivers most public benefit.

Supporting Diversity means supporting London
Because we serve one of the most diverse cities in the world, our Lottery-funded programmes deliver strongly on equity, diversity and inclusion.

London is the most ethnically diverse region of England and Wales and has the highest proportion of residents identifying as LGBTQ+. Reducing support for London would disproportionally effect people from these communities.

The mismatch between demand, need and share
At present, except for skills funding, English regions receive a broadly equal share of Lottery funding. This does not recognise population size, the size of the industry or the concentration of talent. The mismatch is clearest in short film funding, where the application to award ratio is much higher in London than other regions.

Seven London boroughs are among the 20 per cent most deprived local authority districts in England. But again, this is not the full picture. Regional figures obscure that deprivation in London is concentrated, with multiple deprivation across many neighbourhoods.

We ask instead that deprivation is assessed on a neighbourhood level, and that demand and need are weighed alongside geography when assessing what is proportionate.

Making good cause funding representative
We support making good cause funding more participatory, inclusive and representative for communities across the UK. Our experience suggests that delegated, locally rooted decision-making already achieves much of this in practice. We strongly support BFI FAN, the existing delivery structure for film, and ask government to protect and build on this.

Encouraging more applications from people who are eligible to apply

We suggest simplifying the application and reporting process for smaller applicants, and offering more hands-on support for first-time applicants through greater use of delegated distributors. Clearer and longer notice for funding rounds would help smaller organisations plan capacity.

What Lottery funding achieves in London

Lottery funding for film supports a wide range of activity the market does not supply: short films, training for people without industry contacts, screening films that will never fill a multiplex, and audiences where there are no commercial cinemas.

At Film London, this includes projects such as Film Hub London, BFI NETWORK, Spotlight, FLAMIN, the Skills Cluster and Equal Access Network, and London’s Screen Archives.

Lottery investment in London delivers strongly against outcomes identified in the consultation. For example:

Reaching young people

Our Lottery-funded work reaches young people in disadvantaged communities and grassroots organisations, getting young people through the door and keeping them in work once they are there. Film London Connect provides mentoring at the point where a young person is trying to convert interest into a career, while Film Hub London’s young audiences work gives young people a role in programming what their local cinema shows.

Screen heritage projects

Undocumented addresses the historic absence of Black home movies from UK archives and shows how Lottery money produces community-led heritage practice. Other archive projects bring screen heritage to outer boroughs with little arts provision and to people who would never book a ticket for it. Resilience awards have enabled capacity building, for example, boosting licensing activity to widen access and generate earned income for London’s Screen Archives.

Attracting additional investment

Critically, Lottery funding gives us the standing to raise money elsewhere, both from the industry and other organisations. Local authorities, developers, studios, community foundations, philanthropic funders and research councils have all invested in our projects once Lottery support has been awarded, unlocking funding we would not otherwise be able to access.

Find out more about our Lottery-funded activity

• Case studies illustrating Young Audience Champion activity:

Open City Documentary Film Festival's experimental short films for families with children aged 2 to 7 and The Garden Cinema's year-round family programming for children aged 5 to 11

• Recent examples from Film London Connect illustrating what the mentoring relationship delivers in practice: Newton Ndukuba and Gareth Lowrie, and Sofia Soto and Felix Schmilinsky
• Undocumented: A Framework for Community-Led Black Screen Heritage Practice sets out the learning of the first two years of Undocumented for the benefit of the whole sector

Read more here.