Levelling Up the Screen Industries?

Film and Television Production as Regenerative Strategy in Places Left Behind
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-88775-3
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 150 Seiten, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Media and Cultural Industries

This timely book examines how screen industry development has emerged as a vital strategy for economic and cultural regeneration in England's post-industrial regions.

While Bristol, Manchester, and Liverpool have become established creative hubs, this study shifts focus to three underrepresented areas—The Solent and South Hampshire, Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, and Sunderland—each grappling with decline and persistent underinvestment. Through comparative case studies, the book reveals how these regions are attempting to address these issues by developing screen industry initiatives despite having only limited resources. It analyses how local stakeholders navigate the interplay of infrastructure, governance, cultural capital, and narrative positioning to build creative ecosystems that strengthen cultural identity and promote place-based storytelling.

Set against the backdrop of devolution, regional policy failures, and "Levelling Up" rhetoric, this research offers practical insights into how historically excluded areas can challenge established patterns of creative investment concentration. As such, it is essential reading for policymakers, creative professionals, researchers, and students in media studies, cultural policy, regional development, and economic geography interested in place-based cultural regeneration strategies.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mckenna, Mark

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction 1. Levelling Up and Moving Out: Clusters, Corridors and Creative Policy 2. A Desire to Make Waves: Navigating the New Waters of the Solent’s Burgeoning Film Industry 3. Balancing Heritage and Progress: Reimagining the Potteries as a Centre for Digital Film Production 4. Telling a Different Story: Hollywood on the Wear 5. Looking Inward and Doubling Down: Beyond the Broken Promises of Levelling Up Coda: The Stories That We Tell

Über Autor(innen)

Dr Mark McKenna is an Associate Professor in Film and Media Industries at the University of Staffordshire. His work has explored those industries from a range of different perspectives, considering marketing and branding practice, regulatory policy, and media labour. He has published widely in these areas and is the author of Nasty Business: The Marketing and Distribution of the Video Nasties (2020), Snuff (2022), Big Wednesday: Lamenting Lost Youth in the New Hollywood (Routledge, 2024) and is the co-editor (with William Proctor) of Horror Franchise Cinema (Routledge, 2021). In addition to his academic work, he co-authored (with Andrew Lennon) the report Silicon Stoke: Developing Film, TV and Other Content Production in North Staffordshire, which explored the opportunities that are available locally for stimulating the growth of North Staffordshire’s screen industry set against the backdrop of the government’s “Levelling Up” agenda. That work informs this book.