Teacher brings his Oscar to show class on opening day

The country’s first Centre of Screen Excellence – created to address the shortage of film and TV professionals at a time of unprecedented activity – opened to a veritable red carpet of behind-the-scenes headliners.

The screenwriter Sally Wainwright, creator of Gentleman Jack, was there for a pep talk, with executives from Channel 4 and the British Film institute – the BFI – in tow.

But the producer Gareth Ellis-Unwin upstaged them all when he zipped open his plain grey rucksack and pulled out the Academy Award for best picture he had won nine years ago.

“It’s a little tarnished from students getting their paws all over it,” he said. “But it’s a symbol of the industry these students will be working for.”

Mr Ellis-Unwin had won the statuette for The King’s Speech, in which Colin Firth impersonated the stammering George VI. Part of it was filmed in West Yorkshire, where the Odsal and Elland Road stadiums doubled for Wembley in 1925.

The crew had been brought from London, at considerable expense, because local talent was not available, Mr Ellis-Unwin said. A decade on, comparable productions had increased in number, making crewing them harder still.

“Demand has outstripped supply,” he said. “There are skills shortages in critical areas. So we have to build a pipeline to produce workers of the future.”

As head of film at the industry body ScreenSkills, it is currently his job to find 10,000 new recruits to the sector and retain 15,000 existing workers – a target set by the BFI. The 75 new starters in Leeds yesterday were the first tranche, and would be encouraged to consider it a job for life, Mr Ellis-Unwin said.

“A lot of people see the creative industries as being something fun for a short window of time, before going off to get a proper job. But this has the potential for a full-life career.”

Screen professionals were neither “drawn only from the elite” nor were they stereotypical luvvies, he added.

“People think you have to be extroverts, high fiving everyone and turning handsprings down the corridor. In fact, it’s a discipline like any other.”

The BFI said the choice of Leeds as the first centre of excellence was a milestone in its drive to develop a thriving screen industry outside London. The city will shortly be the new home of Channel 4, and of the Leeds Studios – a complex of four sound stages totalling 75,000 sq ft – that will open this summer.

Ben Roberts, the BFI’s chief executive, said: “For people in Yorkshire, this centre offers a very real career pathway into much needed jobs, and also creates a blueprint for further centres around the UK.”