The Freelancer Experience: Creating Positive Change

According to recent government figures, the British film, TV and music sector contributed over £20.4 billion to the UK economy in 2022. Up to 44% of the film and video workforce is classed as freelance. This is a period of unprecedented disruption in the wake of the pandemic followed by industrial action in the US film and TV industry that paused UK and UK production in 2023.

UK freelancers today face an increased in precarious and poor working conditions, leading to loss of expertise and skilled resource in the industry. According to a recent report by Bectu, 52% of UK’s film and TV workforce are still out of work in 2024, with a remarkable 38% of the workforce planning to leave the UK film and television workforce in the next 5 years.

The Freelancer Experience — Creating Positive Change workshop brought together researchers, advocacy groups, sector organisations and screen professionals to discuss the significant challenges faced by freelancers today in the film and television industries, and the opportunities for positive change. The workshop aimed to answer the following questions:

• How can freelancers be better supported to navigate this precarity?
• How can this precarity be reduced?
• What roles do government and national and local sector organisations have in creating change?

The Freelancer Experience: Creating Positive Change workshop took place at Minghella Studios in the University of Reading’s Whiteknights Campus on 30 April 2024.

The findings emerging from the workshop included:

• Pockets of fantastic practice in the recruitment, professional development, retention and working conditions of freelancers exist across the country, but more work is needed to share this good practice and apply it more widely.
• There is a need to further develop local and national support and networks for freelancers and the businesses that employ them.
• Tax reliefs have been a fantastic boon to the screen industries, but the conditions attached to how productions that benefit from them are administered could be further refined in order to enhance working conditions.

Our forthcoming interim Screen Industry Voices report focuses on freelancers and will bring these findings and some detailed recommendations for positive change to policymakers and sector leaders.