The Box secures major BFI funding to transform access to Southwest film heritage
24 June 2026
The Box has secured a funding award of £330K across three years from the British Film Institute (BFI) to support and develop its nationally significant film archive as well as help safeguard and share the Southwest's screen heritage for future generations.
The funding has been awarded through the BFI Screen Heritage Fund and follows the success of The Box's Reimagining the Film Archive programme (2023-2026) which explored new ways of interpreting and sharing the film archive to make it more inclusive and relevant to contemporary audiences.
The new investment will support an ambitious three-year programme which will focus on creating a stronger and more resilient screen heritage ecosystem across the Southwest. Central to the programme is a commitment to partnership working and collaboration, ensuring that activity is co-developed with regional organisations, communities, and practitioners.
The programme has three interconnected strands:
The Living Archive Lab
A new programme facilitated by The Box, that will create opportunities for artists, communities, technologists, researchers, and partners to work directly with moving image collections through a mix of onsite and online activity.
Carbon-Conscious Collections
The development of practical tools, resources, and training to support archives in reducing the environmental impact of preservation – work that builds on The Box’s emerging leadership in this area. These will be shared openly with archive and heritage organisations, supporting more sustainable approaches across the sector.
Reframing the Region
The Box will work with partners across the Southwest to build a bold new strategy for collecting to ensure that moving image collections better reflect the diversity of the region today. This will support a more inclusive and regionally informed approach to contemporary collecting and interpreting screen heritage beyond the three years.
A new online catalogue
Alongside these initiatives, the funding will support the creation of a new online public catalogue. This will make it easier for audiences, researchers, and creatives to discover and access the moving image collections preserved at The Box and lay the foundations for more ambitious and meaningful creative projects, research opportunities, and strategic partnerships in the future.
Victoria Pomery, CEO at The Box Plymouth, said:
This new programme reflects the strong partnership we’ve built with the BFI over the last 14 years and gives us an exciting opportunity to build on the momentum of previous work. Together with partners across the Southwest, we’ll be able to further improve the accessibility, resilience, and long-term care of the region’s moving image collections, ensuring they are preserved, shared, and actively used by the communities they represent.