Creative Cities Convention: “See your background as an asset”

IBC

article here

The Creative Cities Convention in Liverpool, UK, featured a range of highlights, including the first public speech from Channel 4’s new CEO, strategies to strengthen working-class voices, and the latest updates on a burgeoning regional production base.

Breaking into telly is still perceived as a career path best suited to those with the right connections and financial support. However, despite – or perhaps because of – this, working-class voices were dominant at the Creative Cities Convention in Liverpool last week. 

Hometown heroes

Oscar and Bafta winners from the area talked up their working-class backgrounds as instrumental to their success. 

Liverpool-born Producer Jimmy Mulville, Co-Founder of Hat Trick Productions, grew up in a “two‑up, two‑down slum house as the fifth of 11 children. That stays with you.” 

The experience drove him to prove people wrong, he said. 

“I didn't fit in at home because I read books [and no one else in his family did]. When I got into Cambridge University, I felt I didn’t belong there. I knew I wouldn’t last five minutes at the BBC. Being an outsider is a great fuel for anybody in the creative industry.” 

Jimmy McGovern, Cracker Screenwriter and fellow Scouser, was born in 1949, “in an area that was totally poverty-stricken, but it was fine because everybody was poverty-stricken,” he recalled. “I wasn't even aware of poverty until I passed the 11 plus and I went to a school with the sons of bank managers and doctors. That’s when I understood. That's where I got my sense of social justice from.” 

Andrea Arnold, the Director of critically acclaimed social realist films like American Honey, Fish Tank, and Bird, grew up in a council house in Dartford and thought she’d end up working in a factory. 

“People who’ve had education and money grow up with a belief,” she said. “I didn’t have that. You have to build it yourself, and that takes time.” 

She added: “Everyone is capable of so much more than they realise, but people get told they’re not powerful. I want young people from backgrounds like mine to believe in themselves.” 

Tony Schumacher, the Writer of Merseyside-set crime dramas Responder and The Cage, found success in the M&E industry via policing, taxi-driving, and hard graft.

“I grew up wanting to be normal, but what does that even mean? If you’re from where I’m from, you know you’re not ‘normal’ in the way the world defines it.” 

In Schumacher’s view, the social‑mobility ladder actually seems longer now than it did in the 1970s. 

“See your background as an asset,” he urged. “When you walk into a room full of people who are nothing like you, that’s your opportunity.” 

Uplifting universal narratives

Director Asif Kapadia (known for Senna, Amy, and Kenny Dalglish) spoke about being a working‑class, second‑generation immigrant from North London.  

“At school in Hackney, everyone was from somewhere else,” he told the audience via video call. “I didn’t realise I was a minority until I entered the industry.” 

He got a grant to attend university. “If I had been starting out now, my parents couldn’t have afforded to send me,” he said. “My perspective – being brown, working‑class, and from an immigrant family – was different. That’s a strength. Be your own boss. 

“And speak up. On my first job as a runner, they were darkening white actors’ skin to ‘look Asian.’ I walked out, found two actual Asian people on the street, and brought them in. I didn’t care if I got fired. You have to stand up for what’s right.” 

Kapadia is currently working on 70 Up, the final instalment of the landmark documentary series, which has followed the same group of Britons every seven years since 1964. 

“The Up project tracked children from different backgrounds to examine whether social mobility was possible,” said Kapadia, who noted the series’ “deep connection to class, opportunity, and the stories we tell about ourselves,” – themes that resonate strongly with his own body of work. 

However, even these established film and TV makers suggested that prejudice among decision-makers, who are often London-based, remains.  

“Just because you are working class or from a particular area doesn’t mean you can only write certain stories,” said Schumacher. 

McGovern added: “If you have empathy, you can tell universal stories.” 

PSB merger on the agenda 

Sir Philip Redmond, the creator of Grange Hill at the BBC, then Brookside and Hollyoaks at Channel 4, reiterated his belief that these two public service broadcasters (PSBs) should merge.

“Every single one of you can get behind the idea that we need a wider debate about what licence payers want from public service broadcasting,” he told the TV industry audience. “Public service broadcasting exists to do what we need it to do, not what others think it should do. That’s a social debate, and it needs to be pushed.

“The future of this £5bn, licence‑fee‑raising organisation is what’s at stake,” he added. “If we want to be unique and specific, the only thing we can do is make sure we have a strong, confident PSB – one that isn’t frightened to ignore the algorithm (of commissioning). There’s one thing I can’t stress enough. Everyone knows this shouldn’t just be about short‑term pressure.” 

Yet, there was pushback from the incoming Channel 4 CEO, Priya Dogra. Making her first public speech in the role, the former Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) and Sky executive said: “I spent years in M&A, and the thing you learn is that there are no mergers, only acquisitions. Someone is always buying someone else. From Channel 4’s perspective, that’s the wrong outcome. It would mean Channel 4 being subsumed into another organisation. Losing Channel 4’s editorial voice and the impact we have on content and on indies would be a loss for society and for the creative economy.” 

She said the broadcaster was open to “strategic alignments” and said she supported the need for a financially stable outcome for the BBC in its charter renewal. However, she drew the line at introducing advertising around BBC content, whether linear or on YouTube. 

“Beyond the seismic commercial impact on us and other broadcasters, it risks undermining the BBC’s universality,” she said. “It could compromise what makes the BBC the BBC. We already have one commercially driven public service broadcaster – us. Creating another doesn’t strengthen the ecosystem; it weakens it.

“It would be helpful if the government took that option off the table and gave the industry some certainty – especially in an ad market that’s structurally challenged and volatile.” 

Strengthening the region

Finding the funds to develop production and fill skills shortages are two vital, perennial issues if the industry is to grow in cities across the M62 corridor. 

“There’s a lot more infrastructure in the north than there was in 2020, but we still have a long way to go,” said John Whittle, Managing Director at production company Lime Pictures. “We’re not only competing with the Southeast and other parts of England, but with Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The north of England is in a place where we have to compete and collaborate.” 

Screen Alliance North was established three years ago as a collaboration among four regional agencies (Manchester, Yorkshire, North East, and Liverpool). Its latest report identified 67 production companies operating across the north of England. It also found that £103m had been spent across the four regions since 2022 to make 285 productions. Further, it revealed that over 3,700 people have been trained on courses funded by the alliance. 

“When the BFI tendered for the skills cluster, we came together as a ‘super‑cluster’ representing more than 10 million people,” said Caroline Cooper Charles, CEO of Screen Yorkshire. “That has allowed us to work strategically, combine our knowledge of local crew bases, and make sure everything we do is evidence‑based and not duplicated across regions. 

“We all work closely with our local production communities, and we don’t want to lose that. However, the partnership has allowed us to bring more business into the north – not just from each other, but from across the UK and internationally. We’ve opened the industry to people who weren’t previously engaging in it but now can.” 

This City is Ours, The Responder, and Time are among the award-winning dramas that have helped drive growth in the Liverpool City region since 2019, according to the Liverpool Film Office. Its Impact Report 2019-2025 found the film and TV industry created 5,408 full-time equivalent jobs during that period, with more than 1,600 productions said to have added £150m to the local economy. 

BBC looks north 

Since the BBC moved to Salford 15 years ago, staff numbers have grown from 2,000 to around 3,500.  

Heidi Dawson, BBC Head of the North of England and Controller of Radio 5, said: “I was one of those who moved. I grew up in Lancashire and went to the University of Manchester, but at the time, I had to live and work in London to build a career in the industry. Moving to Salford meant I could come home and do the job I wanted to do here. So, I want to challenge the misconception that it was just a bunch of Londoners travelling north.” 

Major departments like BBC Sport, BBC Children’s, and Radio 5 Live were there from day one. Breakfast TV and Morning Live have followed. Every BBC radio network also has a national programme coming out of Salford. 

“We’ve also got almost a thousand software engineers. The people driving major BBC products like iPlayer and Sounds are based here,” she said. 

Building a long-term home for production

To continue the region’s development, the next step seems to be to anchor productions in the city with a new studio, which is taking shape in a former Littlewoods building. 

The Depot, two 20,000ft² stages adjacent to the Littlewoods building, has been open since 2021. A further six stages and postproduction facilities are planned, provided that finance can be secured. 

Hat Trick Productions’ Mulville said he is working with the London Screen Academy (which provides 16 to 18-year-olds with vocational training in behind-the-camera roles) to create a film and TV education hub on the campus. 

“I approached the London Screen Academy and said: ‘It's a brilliant school, but if you keep it in London, you will become a stereotype. You've got to get this idea out to other places. Liverpool is ideal.’” 

Instead of importing craft talent from elsewhere to make shows in Liverpool, Mulville said: “Local people should work on productions made here.” 

He also expressed concern about the recent trend of BBC dramas portraying the city as a drug capital. 

“I’ve got a rom‑com set in Liverpool – I’ll ring the writer and tell him to stick a bag of cocaine in it, so it gets commissioned,” he joked. “Tell these stories, but tell the other stories too about families, love, community, women’s stories. Not just crime.”