Want to make your organisation sustainable and achieve ambitious goals?
Taking place in Edinburgh on Friday 12th August, this training event is designed to help film festival professionals improve their skills in acquiring sponsorships.
If you work for a UK-based film festival and are keen to secure new income streams to ensure the future sustainability of your organisation, this training event will give you new ideas and practical advice you can immediately put into action.
This event is supported by the BFI Film Audience Network.
Applications are now closed for this event.
Email info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk with any queries.
About the course
The training event will be delivered in two sessions, focusing on:
- How to approach a pitch & overview of sponsorship strategy with Jennifer Frees (Former Vice President, Partnerships, Toronto International Film Festival)
- Sponsorship case study with Nuala O’Sullivan (Founder, Women Over Fifty Film Festival)
Fee
The fee for this course is £20. See Support to join for details of how to access potential support via your Film Hub.
Food & drinks
Refreshments and a networking lunch will be provided.
Am I eligible?
This course is open to film festival professionals working in film festivals of all sizes across the UK. Applicants must be a member of their local Film Hub. If you’re not yet a member, it’s free to join.
Find your local Film Hub.
Speakers
Jennifer Frees
Former Vice President, Partnerships, Toronto International Film Festival
Jennifer Frees has diverse fundraising, marketing, brand development, and strategic partnership experience in both for-profit and non-profit sectors. Her innovative projects have won marketing and design awards for highly regarded international brands, as well as generating over $180M for her non-profit clients. Jennifer joined the Executive Leadership Team at the Toronto Region Board of Trade in October 2020 in the role of Senior Vice-President, Business Development, where she leads the revenue-driving Commercial unit (Membership, Marketing, Events, and Partnership teams). Until this Fall, Jennifer served as Vice President, Partnerships at TIFF, where she led a team of Canada's strongest partnership and events industry professionals and one of the most successful partnerships programs in the film festival world. Jennifer is an internationally sought-after business development speaker and workshop facilitator, and provides senior sales, negotiation, and business development advisory services for a variety of charitable causes.
Nuala O'Sullivan
Founder, Women Over Fifty Film Festival (WOFFF)
Nuala O’Sullivan is the founder of Women Over 50 Film Festival – a celebration of older women in front of and behind the camera. At the BBC World Service she created, wrote and produced the interactive, online soap opera The Flatmates for English language learners. She is also the author of Teaching English in South-East Asia and English Grammar Workbook for Dummies. She has written plays for theatre and has been a series writer for the BBC Radio 4 drama Brief Lives. She is a contributing author to the upcoming book Falling off a Cliff? Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries (Autumn 2022). In 2014 she wrote and produced a short film, Microscope, and it was her experience of submitting this short to film festivals and attending festivals that brought home to her how underrepresented older women were on both sides of the camera. She set up Women Over 50 Film Festival as a positive and practical response to this lack of visibility so that older women in film would have a platform dedicated to them and their work.
Support to join
Your local Film Hub may be able to support your the cost of your pass, travel and/or accommodation. Find details of the support offered by your local Film Hub at the links below:
Supported by
