23/06/2006

Speaking at the 10th Annual Lottery Monitor Conference on June 21 at London’s British Museum, Tessa Jowell, the UK’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, announced that the shares of Lottery grants for good causes, divided between sport, arts, film and heritage, for the 2009-2019 period would remain unchanged, and that the UK Film Council – one of the two organisations along with Scottish Screen responsible for distributing National Lottery money to film – would take on all film funding from the Arts Council England with the same budget of £3m per year, for that same period starting in 2009.

The government’s announcement on the future of Lottery money follows a public consultation on the division of funds between arts, film, heritage and sport launched in November 2005, which received a total of 11,000 responses. Sports, arts and film, and heritage each receive 16.6% of the good cause money raised while the remaining 50% is distributed by the Big Lottery Fund to projects supporting areas such as health, education and the environment.

The UK Film Council has over £62m available each year for film development, production, distribution, exhibition, training, education, international development and export promotion, as well as for Regional film activities and the British Film Institute.

National Lottery money distributed by the UK Film Council has supported the production of 115 feature films and over 300 short films, including award-winning films The Wind That Shakes The Barley [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ken Loach
interview: Rebecca O’Brien
film profile] (granted £545,000 from the New Cinema Fund), Red Road [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Gosford Park, The Magdalene Sisters [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Bend it Like Beckham [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Touching the Void [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and The Constant Gardener [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile].