West Midlands Digital Funded Development

Is your company passionate about developing new talent in the West Midlands?

We are looking for indies with a passion for digital content who are dedicated to nurturing content creators/film makers and want to help develop their big, bold ideas.

This is a joint scheme between Channel 4 and Create Central to support the creative sector in the region and nurture talent.

If you think you have the capacity to house a funded development scheme for content creators and would like to mentor them and their ideas then this opportunity is for you!

One indie will be selected to parent the scheme and be paid a fee of up to £5K to house idea submissions.

We will be calling for submissions from individual content creators/film makers who are relatively new to digital commissioning with Channel 4 and who could benefit from the experience and guidance of an established independent production company in developing their ideas through to a potential taster/pilot or beyond.

The selected indie will then gather submissions and present these to the C4 digital commissioning team for selection. We will select up to five ideas and they will remain paired with our selected indie to make a non-tx pilot/taster or fuller treatment.

Each project will be given a small development fund.

Please express your interest in being considered for this scheme along with details of your work in developing talent, digital platforms, knowledge of social and why we should select your company by emailing: digitalcommissioning@channel4.co.uk with the subject, WEST MIDLANDS FUNDING SCHEME.

Commercial and Legal Deal Terms Summary:

To be eligible the Producer must have a substantive business and production base in the West Midlands and at least 50% of production talent must have their usual place of employment in the West Midlands. This means the local government areas of Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton and incorporates the areas covered by the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership, Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership and the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership)
This development initiative has a total budget of £20,000, £10,000 of which will come from Channel 4 and £10,000 of which will come from Create Central.
The selected Producer will enter into a development agreement with Channel 4, which will detail their role and obligations in relation to the development of the content creator(s) submissions.
The selected Producer will also enter into a separate agreement with Create Central in order to receive and disburse its funding contribution to the overall project.
The Producer will retain £5,000 of the total budget as a management fee and the remaining £15,000 will be used to develop the content creator(s) ideas alongside them. Expenditure of any of the remaining £15,000 by the Producer will be subject to Channel 4’s approval of the budgeted cost of the relevant work in accordance with the development agreement as well as agreement with Create Central.
The Producer will arrange the call out to West Midlands based content creators (primarily film makers) to participate in development work for Channel 4 (the wording of the call out to be pre-approved by Channel 4). The Producer will then review any submissions in conjunction with Channel 4 and together they will select the content creator(s) to proceed to development stage (Channel 4’s decision being final). The amount of funding allocated to each individual development shall be entirely at Channel 4’s discretion and will be subject to Channel 4’s internal approval process.
Channel 4 will engage the Producer to proceed with the individual development project(s) working with the selected content creator(s) and a short statement of work in relation to each project (including the specification, delivery date and development fee) will be entered into between Channel 4 and the Producer and deemed annexed to the initial development agreement.
Following each statement of work being entered into:
- The Producer will assign all rights throughout the world in the development work to Channel 4 (including all necessary format rights/rights in the content creator(s)’s original material, which they shall secure from the content creator(s)) as security pending a commission on terms to be pre-approved by Channel 4).
- The Producer will contract with the selected content creator(s) directly subject to Channel 4 pre-approving the form(s) of contract.
If following the development stage, Channel 4 wishes to commission the Producer (with the participation of the relevant content creator(s)) to produce digital content based on any of the development work, any such commissions will be contracted in accordance with Channel 4’s standard digital commissioning terms.
If Channel 4 decides not to commission any further work based on the development work, 6 months following delivery of the development work Channel 4 shall reassign all rights in the development work back to the Producer and the Producer shall in turn reassign any format rights/rights in any original material originally owned by the content creator(s) back to the content creator(s).
For the avoidance of doubt, the Producer will not engage any of the content creator(s) on an exclusive basis and Channel 4 shall be free to work with the content creator(s) on other developments/commissions without the involvement of the Producer.

Key Details

We are looking for a West Midlands based indie with a passion for digital content and the desire to nurture regional talent.

Funding comes from Channel 4 and Create Central, for an indie to parent the scheme and to develop individual project ideas.

Up to five ideas will be selected and they will remain paired with the indie to make a non-tx pilot/taster.

Please submit to digitalcommissioning@channel4.co.uk with the subject WEST MIDLANDS FUNDING SCHEME no later than 24th February 2022.