The ICO blog brings you the latest ideas from the world of cinemas and film festivals, as well as industry updates, best practice tips, opinion pieces and interviews. The aim of our blog is to:
- look for solutions to current issues in film exhibition
- offer a platform for bringing any problems in the sector to the spotlight
- champion voices that have traditionally been undervalued in the film exhibition sector
- highlight the diversity of cinema culture in the UK
We’re always open to receiving pitches for our blog. If you have an idea for an article about film exhibition which you’d like us to commission, please get in touch and briefly (up to 200 words) outline your piece. To give you a steer of the sort of thing we’re looking for, you can find a list of topics we’re interested in and some tips below.
Fees and specs
- Word count: 800-1200 words – if you’d like to request a longer word count, please get in touch in advance to check if this is possible
- Rate: 19p/word
- Deadline: we publish on a Thursday and first drafts need to be with us by midday on Monday, alongside five images with labelled image credits
- Contact: Patrick Stewart (patrick.stewart@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk)
Please note, if you have a salaried role in film and can reasonably write your blog in working hours (i.e. it is of benefit to your organisation to promote their work this way), we would love to have your writing, but we’d ask you to forego the fee for someone who doesn’t have organisational support.
Tips
- Before you pitch, please check that your idea is something we haven’t previously published on our blog. You can see past posts here and can use the search bar in the top right hand corner of this page to search our site.
- Please don’t start writing your piece before it’s been commissioned. At the pitching stage, please send a brief summary of your idea and outline of the piece (up to 200 words).
- If we don’t commission your pitch please don’t be discouraged, it doesn’t mean it was a ‘bad pitch’, and please do pitch to us again.
Topics we’re interested in
- Industry challenges (e.g. rising costs, rights sourcing problems, examples of financial resilience or changes in business models)
- Workforce issues in exhibition (e.g. working conditions, organisational diversity)
- Case studies from your experience of working in the sector
- Accessibility (technological, practical, marketing)
- Audience development (e.g. how to get new audiences to come to your cinema, how to make sure your cinema reflects your community)
- Environmental sustainability (e.g. practical ways to reduce your venue’s carbon footprint)
- Young audiences and how to engage them with cinema
- Sharing stories of success within film exhibition
- Marketing and promotion (e.g. how to get your community involved, how to make sure your marketing is inclusive, how to work with influencers, how to run a successful digital marketing campaign, how to target audiences)
- Broadening content on screen (e.g. expanding what is shown in venues, new approaches to screening and programming)
- Improving the cinema experience (e.g. how to add value to your screenings via Q&As and special events)
- Demystifying a part of the film exhibition industry
We’d love to hear interesting pitches and case studies especially on the above. There are naturally issues that any single organisation cannot cover, so we are very happy for the pieces to be composed of different perspectives on an issue.
Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash.