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Top screen role for the woman who's putting the regions back in the picture
It didn't take long for Ruth Pitt to deliver her opening salvo.
Just a few weeks after being appointed, the new executive director of Screen England wrote an impassioned editorial in the journal Screen International which rejected the perceived notion that anything good in film, television and computer gaming comes out of London and those toiling in the provinces can only ever be second-best.
"If there's one word I hate, it's 'regional'," she wrote. "Whichever way you cut it, it still smacks of some ghastly bargain-basement store at a designer outlet in Grimsville, where everything is cut price, low-quality and past its sell-by-date. We've tackled racism, sexism, even ageism – and now the only kid in the playground we feel free to mock is the one from out of town who suffers from that embarrassing disability –regionalism."
Ruth, who lives in Ilkley, went on to pose the question – would Broken Sword, a huge commercial success, be classed as a regional computer game simply because it was the brainchild of York-based Revolution Software?
Would teen drama Skins be classed as a regional television series because it happened to be filmed in the South West? Of course not, was the only possible answer.
However, Ruth knows persuasive arguments alone may not be enough if she is to succeed in her new role. As the first executive director for Screen England, the umbrella organisation for the nine screen agencies
across the country, her job is partly to act as a single voice for the various different sectors and partly to identify areas where they can work more effectively together
"Basically we support anything that happens on a screen," says Pitt. "That means cinema, television, games and mobile phones. The reason why the work of Screen England is so vital is screen is how we interact with the world today.
"Part of the screen agencies' work is to develop jobs in their area, so that is going to lead to some healthy competition between them, but there are so many activities where they can work together too."
Ruth's optimism comes against the backdrop of a tough 12 months, in which the region's television industry has been particularly badly hit. In March, ITV announced it has made losses of 100m in six months and 600 jobs – 192 of them in Yorkshire – would have to go.
However, if there is one person who can champion the need for regional talent pools, it could well be Ruth. A former journalist and TV presenter, she has run her own independent production company as well as working for Granada Television as head of documentaries and as the editor of BBC's Everyman documentary strand before becoming creative director of documentaries for BBC Religion and Ethics.
"When I saw the advertisement for the job, I thought, 'This is just the kind of work I have been wanting to do'. I am, and always have been, a supporter of regional production and that's essentially what this post
is about."
Part of Pitt's remit is to see how the screen agencies can help to put into practice aspects of the Government's Digital Britain report. At its heart, the aim is to reach out to those people who would not
normally be "switched on" to or who don't yet understand the digital world.
"With public sector money being tight at the moment, we are in a good position to deliver a lot of services to this and the next government,"
she says.
"One brilliant way to get older people motivated to go online is through the archive work that is done in the regions. If you make local
film archives available on the internet you can involve older people by asking them to contribute their knowledge. In Bristol, for example, there is a fantastic project being developed which allows people to identify buildings, occasions or people in archive material that is online."
The Yorkshire Film Archive, considered to be one of the best in the country, went online this week, with Screen Yorkshire as one of the project's major funders.
"They have a huge amount of fascinating material," says Ruth. "And they have a wonderful director in Sue Howard. She is incredibly passionate about film.
"There are these amazing archives in all the regions with all these hidden stories. I think we need to tell people those stories are there and make sure that they see them. They are of the people and for the people."
However, for all the good work which goes on behind the scenes, Ruth knows that those who live outside the M25 also want to see the place they live and work on both the small and big screen. Filming is suspended on Heartbeat and The Royal, series which brought a slice of Yorkshire into homes across the UK, but other projects, including the six-part comedy drama Married, Single, Other, are in the pipeline.
"It is important for people to see their region represented on screen," says Ruth.
"When the ITV drama Cold Feet came out in the mid-'90s, it made a huge difference to people's perception of Manchester – it was portrayed as an exciting place to be – and hopefully this new comedy drama series currently being produced for ITV in Yorkshire will put not only Leeds, but the whole of the county back on the TV map. Keeping major production in all our regions is vital."
To this end, Pitt regards the BBC's move to Salford as encouraging and she has already met BBC Director General Mark Thompson to discuss ways in which Screen England can help the corporation to improve regional representation.
"We can assist them in that because each one of the agencies knows its local community really well. We know where the stories are and where the talent is. And talent doesn't just live in London.
"I feel encouraged because those ITV stations, such as Granada, Central, YTV – at their height in the '60s, '70s and '80s produced some of the most successful dramas and most cutting-edge investigative documentaries of the period. They are great examples of regional programming at its best – and I believe it could happen again."
Feature films are often seen as the jewel in the crown of regional success and Ruth insists there is already a lot to shout about.
"They have enormous cultural significance in our society," she says. "Almost everyone goes to the cinema at some point, even if they
don't engage in any other cultural activity. British film is brilliant and among the best in the world."
She points out that some of the most talked about British directors of the moment – Danny Boyle, originally from the North-West, Nottingham's Shane Meadows and Andrea Arnold who was born and raised in Dartford, Kent – were helped in their careers by their regional or national screen agencies.
Boyle's Trainspotting, Meadows' This is England and Arnold's recent hit Fish Tank have been major successes, but they are also challenging films which, without the help of the regional screen agencies, may never have been made.
"We have to support people to take risks," says Pitt. "There are a lot of very talented young directors coming through now from all kinds of social and ethnic backgrounds and they are going to make some great films."
And great films also have a positive knock-on effect on regional economies. The recent remake of Brideshead Revisited, partly filmed at Castle Howard, not only created jobs in the region in the short term but also brought a lot of inward investment in the longer term through tourism from America and elsewhere.
It is those "unseen" benefits the screen agencies bring to a region that Pitt is keen to promote.
"We need to be better at explaining our value to people; what we give back to a region," she says. "This is an exciting time in the creative media industries. The winds of change are blowing and we have to work out how we remain standing. The best way is to be proactive and stay ahead of change."
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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