Open Call for Event Proposals - T.L.C.

Salary: Up to £500 budget + speaker fees

Inclusive Cinema is looking for submissions for T.L.C., a project aiming to help programmers and venues increase audiences for trans-led cinema releases and to increase safety for trans audiences and staff in-venue.

About the Open Call

The outcome will be a podcast series that records and shares 3+ live events – panel discussions, presentations, round tables, filmmaker interviews and Q&As, presentations, short talks, or other audio-suitable formats – hosted by venues and/or festivals, with support from Inclusive Cinema, curator So Mayer, and award-winning podcast producers Aunt Nell Productions (The Log Books: Untold Stories from Britain’s LGBTQ+ History).

Are you an individual or team at/in a cinema/multi-arts venue, festival, community group, film collective or other cinema-involved entity based anywhere in the UK with experience and/or interest in programming, hosting and discussing trans cinema? We’d love to hear from you with a proposal for a live event that can be recorded and podcast. We’ve suggested some frameworks and potential questions below to get you thinking, but our list is not exhaustive and we are very open to your suggestions and ideas!

Inclusive Cinema will provide funding to 3 events. We will support speakers fees (for established venues or festivals) and offer additional event funding (for community groups or collectives without regular funding) up to £500 maximum, as well as planning and promotional assistance and editorial feedback from So Mayer. You’ll also be invited to a workshop with Aunt Nell on making live events that work as podcasts (and vice versa), including practical tech advice, and advice on transcribing for d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing audience members.

In addition, Inclusive Cinema can provide podcast editing and hosting for events that fit our brief and are already funded within your venue/festival/collective programmes, providing the event is complete by 15 Oct 2022. If you’re already planning and have funding for an event that offers T.L.C. and you’d like it to be recorded for posteriT (and might like to attend the workshop on podcasting live events), get in touch! You can submit your event details via the application Google form.

If you have a more ambitious/expensive idea and need more money, let us know and we can look at the Film Exhibition Fund, which is available to exhibitors in the Film Audience Network via their regional film hubs. You can find links to the hubs on our funding page.

Timeline

• Initial proposal: no more than 500 words, to be delivered by 25 April 2022, via the Google form. Find the form here: https://forms.gle/iRUeQ8NP7MCDQ57h7
• Interview dates: shortlisted proposals will be called for interviews in w/b 2 May 2022; the Inclusive Cinema team will circulate questions in advance to help with interview prep
• Partner announcement: Inclusive Cinema will announce the 3 sponsored projects within 2 weeks of interviews
• Programme lock: event budget, date and copy to be confirmed by 13 June 2022
• Podcast goes live: July 2022
• Delivery: all live events to be completed by 15 Oct 2022, audio files to be delivered within 2 weeks of event completion

What is T.L.C.?

2021-22 has seen the release of trans-led and trans-made indie gems from around the world such as Isabel Sandoval’s award-winning Lingua Franca, Cássio Pereira dos Santos’s Valentina, and Max Currie’s Rūrangi. At the same time, trans-inclusive TV shows such as Pose, Sex Education, Euphoria and We Are Who We Are – not to mention Drag Race and Queer Eye – compel large audiences who are passionate about trans and queer storytelling and performance. How can venues, festivals and programmers bring those passionate audiences to the cinema for unique film experiences – and ensure that brilliant films are reaching the audiences they deserve? What kinds of marketing, educational and contextual materials might venues, festivals and programmers use, and where can they find them? Which critics, publications, socials and podcasts can provide support, speakers and strong content? What sort of in-cinema or social events, online promotions or content, can support compelling films and create returning audiences?

In addition, for these films to be embraced, we need to think about making spaces feel welcoming to audiences and speakers, and safe for staff. How can venues and festivals ensure that trans audience members and staff feel safe, supported and welcome at events, in-venue and in online conversations? What kind of practical and immediate changes could be put in place to give everyone the best experience – and what sort of training or resources might best support that for venues, festivals and organisations of all scales? How can you ensure the whole team is educated and feels confident in intersectional trans inclusion, without depending on a token trans person to educate you? What can programmers and organisers do to ensure that trans speakers and other freelancers feel included and cared for? How can you create spaces to hear from trans audience members, staff and freelancers who might feel excluded from your venue and/or events, or have had negative experiences in the past, and put plans in place to address that exclusion?

We know that all of these questions and more are already being asked and answered by venues, festivals, event organisers, curators, programmers, distributors, filmmakers and audiences. We know that best practice is already happening across the nations and regions, at all scales of event – and we want you to shout about your amazing work, great ideas and brilliant teams, so we can keep growing through exchange and listening, creating a grassroots resource that everyone can learn with. That’s T.L.C.

About Aunt Nell

Aunt Nell is an independent production company built around a joint promise: to listen, and to keep you listening. It was founded in 2021 by Shivani Dave, Tash Walker and Adam Zmith, makers of the award-winning podcast The Log Books.

We are three producers who each identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, and between us we have a wide range of experience from journalism in print, broadcast and online, radio DJing, music promotion, podcast production, and theatre.

The closing date for this position is 25/04/2022 at 23:59