The GMV team spotted the following market opportunity:
- the economics of the ‘long tail’ not having reached film exhibition
- audiences hungry for a wider choice of content.
We applied the service design and innovation methods we usually apply to other people’s projects to our own idea to:
- re-imagine the audience experience of social cinema in local venues of all kinds
- develop a content offer that could include feature film, shorts and recorded theatre, music and dance
- evaluate technical, commercial and legal options for delivery
We secured funding to develop the proof of concept from both the digital innovation strand of EU’s MEDIA Programme and the European Regional Development Funding via Creative England.
We then modeled this new market from first principles, secured partnerships with key players, built the business model and credible delivery plan, creating an investible proposition.
Cinegi Media Limited – GMV’s first spin-out – received its first round of funding in March 2014 from Ingenious Ventures – the venture capital division of London-based investment group Ingenious.
A beta service ran successfully from summer 2014 – autumn 2015 and was welcomed and used by venues, across the UK from Cornwall to Scotland – village halls, community centres, film clubs and societies, restaurants, leisure clubs and theatres amongst others. The beta closed with a season of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Richard II production.
Now Cinegi has been awarded a grant from Arts Council England, in partnership with the BFI, to deliver a public benefit version of the service. Cinegi Arts&Film will be ‘live’ in the early winter 2016 with a catalogue of filmed media including theatre, dance, opera and music from large and smaller arts organisations, and film and archive from the BFI.
The project will test how a digital distribution service can bring arts and cultural content, alongside BFI programming, to new and wider audiences as a shared experience in non-traditional venues and in places offering limited arts infrastructure and engagement.
