Futures in film: Community visions for film and television opportunities in Whitley, Reading, United Kingdom

Journal of Media and Rights

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Futures in film: Community visions for film and television opportunities in Whitley, Reading, United Kingdom
 
Creator Ghosh, Shweta
 
Subject Film production; film practice as research; community-based research; ethnography community; community-based research; collaborative; participatory; practice-based research; film and television industry; creative careers; policy
Description Recently, Berkshire in the United Kingdom (UK) has seen rapid developments in film and television (TV) studios and the skills training sector. The Creative Industries Sector Plan 2025 looks set to further enable investment in technology, skills and research to consolidate UK’s position as a creative superpower. A diverse, local and well-trained workforce and talent pipeline has been considered crucial to achieve this goal, with education and employment remaining central to these conversations. Local residents make up the local workforce. Yet accessing emerging opportunities by local communities remains uneven and unequal. Skills training and workforce development initiatives have been largely led by industry and government priorities, with relatively little attention being paid to community perspectives on this matter. This article unpacks the work done by community members in Whitley (Reading) and students and staff at the University of Reading (UK) in 2023, as part of the Futures in Film project. This practice-based research project sought to address these access gaps via a methodology that combined ethnographic and participatory filmmaking approaches to both explore research questions and facilitate skills training for an under-served community.Contribution: In this way, the project’s original contribution lies in the establishment of a new model of practice that fruitfully aligns industry, education and government priorities with community expression, skills training and academic research outputs. Ultimately, the project and this article advocate for deeper community engagement to strengthen the implementation and evaluation of creative initiatives, thereby making a case for decentralised feedback mechanisms to fine-tune film and TV training initiatives and influence future developments.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor AHRC Impact Accelerator Account fund, CQSD T&L Initiative Fund, Mrinal Rajeev, Kyle Johnson, University of Reading Dr. Trisha Bennett and staff of the Whitley Community Development Association Emmaleigh Williams and Vandy Butcher, Whitley Researchers
Date 2026-04-16
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Qualitative research; participatory research; practice-based research; collaborative filmmaking
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/jmr.v4i1.21
 
Source Journal of Media and Rights; Vol 4, No 1 (2026); 15 pages 3005-2130 3105-4269
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://journalmediarights.org/index.php/jmr/article/view/21/98 https://journalmediarights.org/index.php/jmr/article/view/21/99 https://journalmediarights.org/index.php/jmr/article/view/21/100 https://journalmediarights.org/index.php/jmr/article/view/21/101
 
Coverage United Kingdom (Whitely ward in Reading, Berkshire) 2023 —
Rights Copyright (c) 2026 Shweta Ghosh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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