Creative Cities
The Channel 4 success story
Creative Cities
Creative Cities Channel 4 is a leader in creative innovation across the UK. Its primary role is to back talent. Each year, over £125m is invested in original content in film, television and digital media, producing award-winning films, returning TV shows and cutting-edge comedy. The unique character of Channel 4 and its close relationship with independent producers means that over 200 regionally-based companies currently contribute to our success story. These companies play an immeasurable role in showcasing the skills of genuinely world-class talent and taking regionally-produced programmes to international audiences. Creative Cities captures some of the landmarks of Channel 4’s investment in the UK’s regional cities. It aspires to be more than a promotional vehicle and aims to reflect key themes in what is a changing and decentralising UK. This brochure demonstrates the exponential role that regional production has played in the Channel 4 success story. It also reflects how the reputation of our most creative cities has been transformed. Many of the places represented in the pages that follow have undergone a process of public re-imagination, demonstrating the powerful role that culture and creativity can play in the identity and self-confidence of regional cities and devolved nations. I hope those that believe television is all about London will find it uncomfortable reading. Stuart Cosgrove Director Nations and Regions Channel 4
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Creative Cities
Kings of Comedy
Rhod Gilbert, Carmarthen
Liam Hourican, Belfast
Frankie Boyle, Glasgow
Peter Kay, Bolton
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Max and Paddy, Bolton
Karl Pilkington, Manchester
Leigh Francis, Leeds
Father Ted, Craggy Island
Creative Cities
Real Lives Channel 4 is the only commercial broadcaster in Europe to offer a dedicated prime-time space for emergent talent to produce and direct uncompromising documentaries. Trusted with subjects as emotive as terminal illness, gender dysmorphia, war and poverty, these emerging filmmakers have been responsible for some of the most impactful films in British documentary history. Films such as The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off by Yipp Films, which sold in 60 countries and won 13 international awards.
The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off: Newcastle
The Air Hospital: Glasgow
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The Boy Who Was Born a Girl: Cardiff
Creative Cities
Power & Conflict
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Hunger: Belfast Power, conflict and the machinery of the state are recurring themes in Channel 4 dramas. Both Hunger and Mo reflect on the Troubles in Northern Ireland with sensitivity and creativity, starting out as UK commissions then going on to win a clutch of prestigious international awards. Hunger, the directorial debut of Oscar winner Steve McQueen, starred Michael Fassbender and Liam McMahon. This intimate portrayal of hunger striker Bobby Sands was supported by Northern Ireland Screen and Wales Creative IP Fund. Mo is a stirring biopic of the life and death of Marjorie ‘Mo’ Mowlam, the Labour politician and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, whose critical role in the peace process as she fought cancer, frames the narrative. Julie Walters gives a tour-de-force performance as Mo.
Mo: Belfast
Creative Cities
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Glasgow/Edinburgh, 1996
Trainspotting Trainspotting is a landmark in youth cinema, showing heroin abuse in all its manifestations. It launched the careers of the most talented generation of Scottish actors in the modern era.
Creative Cities
Hit Shows Channel 4 has played a critical role in transforming attitudes to production outside London. Over the years regional production has had to shake off many prejudices and misconceptions being poorly funded, of local interest and of lesser quality. However, Channel 4 has no opt-out services. Everything is for the network, most programmes are relatively well funded and uniquely Channel 4 has to look outwards to the independent sector for its creative excellence. Prejudice had existed within Channel 4 too, but across time a mixture of passionate advocacy, creative energy and increased regulatory quotas forced change. Within a ten year period Channel 4’s annual investment in regional production has grown from £45m to £125m. More importantly, something else has happened. Regional production has gone on a journey from the margins of the schedule to the commercial heart of Channel 4, with shows such as Location Location Location, Embarrassing Bodies, Hollyoaks, Time Team, Skins and Shameless emerging as household names. It is now the source of our hit shows.
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Creative Cities
Created by IWC Media in Glasgow, Channel 4’s property franchise programmes Location Location Location, Relocation Relocation and Kirstie’s Homemade Home support up to 100 jobs per day, attract millions of viewers and reflect the UK’s obsession with property and home improvement.
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Creative Cities
Art Gallery Contemporary Art Channel 4 is a major supporter of arts in the UK. A long-standing partnership with the Turner Prize brought prominence to Britain’s most innovative contemporary artists - Chris Ofili (Manchester) Douglas Gordon, Simon Starling and Richard Wright (Glasgow). Tracey Emin won the Turner Prize in 1999, her drunken performance live on-air two years earlier having brought her national notoriety. More recently she championed her home-town, Margate which also featured in one of Channel 4’s most ambitious arts programmes, The Margate Exodus - a film and live art event, which re-enacted the story of Exodus on a Kent beach. It was a unique collaboration between Penny Woolcock and the emperor of public art, Anthony Gormley.
Public Art Channel 4 has always championed public art on television. In 2002 Channel 4 re-enacted the Battle of Orgreave, reconstructing the confrontation between police and picketing miners in Orgreave, South Yorkshire in 1984. 800 extras participated in the re-enactment, directed by Mike Figgis. Sunderland company Media 19 recorded the impact of Anthony Gormley’s iconic The Angel of the North, while The Big Art Project (2009) encouraged communities across the UK, from Sheffield to Mull, to participate in commissioning public art. Big Art saw Jaume Plensa’s Dream sculpture created in partnership with ex-miners in St Helens. Community resistance in Cardigan Bay meant that plans for floating public art by the Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer had to be abandoned. The landmark show raised £2m from 17 public partners across the UK.
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Art & Social Media Channel 4 regularly uses global web platforms to engage with young artists and creative communities. The BRITDOC Foundation commissions young film-makers to use the web as a gathering place for new documentary. Edinburgh-based digital photography blog Blipfoto and the Glasgow arts network Central Station promote cutting-edge creativity. Birmingham’s Mudlark pioneered theatre and micro-blogging when Channel 4 and the Royal Shakespeare Company collaborated on a participative version of Romeo and Juliet via Twitter.
Digital designer John Butler’s Rabbit from Central Station. Young photography blogger Anne Madelen Kos’s personal selfportraits from Blipfoto are above.
Creative Cities
Liverpool , 1993
Lesbian Kiss When Brookside aired British television’s first pre-watershed lesbian kiss, it provoked public controversy and influenced the subsequent development of soap opera storylines in the UK.
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Creative Cities
Inner City Blues Channel 4 has broadcast some of the most challenging images of urban Britain. The pulsating drama 1 Day portrays street violence and gang crime through the disruptive force of hiphop. West Midlands Police prevented public screenings of the project in Birmingham. Gas Attack was the first drama of the asylum-dispersal era, and dramatised a racist attack on an immigrant community in Glasgow. Disarming Britain: The Street Crime Commission travelled the UK finding local solutions to the national problem of knife and gun crime.
1 Day: Birmingham
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Disarming Britain: Manchester
Gas Attack: Glasgow
Creative Cities
Explosive Drama Red Riding: Yorkshire Drama on Channel 4 is ambitious, subversive and highly-charged. The raw materials here are talent and uncompromising personal vision. Drama is at its most powerful when it is set in a real place, which brings its own unique local characteristics to the unfolding events. The multi awardwinning Red Riding – a dark trilogy of films set in Yorkshire in the 1970s and ‘80s – brings all of these elements into play.
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Creative Cities
Rude Health
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Embarrassing Bodies: Birmingham
By taking personal health from public service preaching to primetime programming, Maverick TV in Birmingham has almost single-handedly invented a new TV genre. Birmingham is also the hub of Channel 4’s digital commissioning in the West Midlands, and has pioneered projects in health, democracy and social media. Embarrassing Bodies, Embarrassing Illnesses and the Sex Education Show are candid and also campaigning shows about rude health. They attract interest and engagement via the web, encouraging users to face up to their private health problems online.
Creative Cities
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Bolton, 2001
Phoenix Nights Peter Kay was discovered by Channel 4 in the regional heats of a stand-up comedy contest So You Think You’re Funny in 1997. His hit series Phoenix Nights made him one of the UK’s most successful comedy stars.
es iti eC tiv ea Cr
Madchester Happy Mondays, the quintessential Madchester band, have a unique relationship with Channel 4. Discovered by pop impresario and Channel 4 presenter Tony Wilson, the Mondays were signed to Factory Records and by the late 80s had become synonymous with Manchester’s chaotic dance music scene. The film 24 Hour Party People told the story of Shaun Ryder and Factory Records, with Ryder
played by Danny Cunningham and Steve Coogan portraying the messianic love of Tony Wilson. In 1993 the Mondays disintegrated, but Ryder returned fronting Black Grape and still committed to an assault on the south. The new band made two notorious appearances on TFI Friday, on which Ryder repeatedly used the word fuck. The regulatory fall-out bizarrely led to Madchester appearing in Channel 4’s Compliance
Queer as Folk: Manchester
Manual: “The Channel 4 Board has undertaken to the ITC that Shaun Ryder will not appear live on Channel 4.” More than a decade later, the Monday’s rave-dancer Bez returned to Channel 4 and won Celebrity Big Brother. Ryder eventually made a cameo appearance as himself in Shameless. The show was not live but it was a redemption of sorts. They knew how to throw a party.
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24 Hour Party People: Manchester
Creative Cities
Talent Across Time
Peter Mullan 1994
Role in Shallow Grave
1996
Role in cult hit Trainspotting
1998
Stars in My Name is Joe
2002
Writes and directs first fllm, The Magdalene Sisters
2006
Films C4 Baftawinning film Boy A
2009
Plays Martin Laws in noir trilogy Red Riding
2010
Directs feature-film Neds for Film4
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Michelle Gomez 1998
Makes Film4 debut in The Acid House
2003
Stars in C4 drama The Book Group
2004–6
Plays Sue White in C4 comedy Green Wing
2007
Lead role in Irvine Welsh drama Wedding Belles
2008
Joins Royal Shakespeare Company
Creative Cities
This is England Starring Thomas Turgoose
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Indie Film
Last King of Scotland Starring Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy
Dead Man’s Shoes Starring Paddy Considine
Channel 4 is the biggest ever commercial investor in independent British film. Through its film production arm Film4 it has created some of the most iconic and influential films of modern times and launched the careers of some of the UK’s most compelling talent, including directors Shane Meadows, Kevin Macdonald, Danny Boyle and Peter Mullan.
Creative Cities
World Stage Channel 4 is a global leader in international documentary, offering a world stage to some of the most talented filmmakers in the creative cities of the UK. Channel 4 is willing to fund risk and allow relatively small companies to work far from home. The stories revealed in these films are as diverse as the countries in which they are set – from bloodshed at the Miss World contest in Nigeria to animal experiments in Wisconsin and images of war torn Iraq in The First Movie.
Monkey Love: Belfast/Wisconsin
The First Movie: Edinburgh/Iraq
Beauty Queens and Bloodshed: Glasgow/Nigeria
Creative Cities
Manchester, 2004
Frank Gallagher Frank Gallagher arrived on screen in 2004. An alcoholic, womanising waster sprung from the creative mind of Paul Abbott, he is the incorrigible star of Shameless, a drama that ransacked a semi-fictitious housing scheme in Manchester and reinvented the rules of class conflict in modern Britain.
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Creative Cities
Live Fast Skins was born to experiment. The first successful drama of the social network era, it launched on the web with an award-winning marketing campaign and had a huge online following before it aired on television. Uniquely, the cast of the drama is replaced every series with untried young actors. The show is also a vehicle for new talent off-screen, being written entirely by a young person’s writing group led by Executive Producer Bryan Elsley, who wrote his first drama for Channel 4 in his native Scotland in 1998. Even the viewers get to join in, by suggesting storylines, rating photos and uploading music to the site.
Skins: Bristol
…the world being created here is new, not neophile, not in love with its own novelty, but young, fresh…
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Thank you Partners: Channel 4’s activities in the Creative Cities of the UK are delivered with our partners: Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, DCMS, NESTA, Northern Film & Media, Northern Ireland Screen, North West Screen, PACT, Scottish Enterprise, Screen West Midlands, Screen Yorkshire, Skillset, TRC Media, the UK Film Council, Wales Creative IP Fund. Image Credits Channel 4 would like to thank all the artists featured in this brochure. Cover image by Brian Sweeney & ISO/Central Station; p3 Tellyfish image by Dundeebased artist ‘Inflatablemonster’ on Central Station; p14-15 images by artist Yarnbomb and photographer Ewen Weatherspoon, created for Inverness Old Town Art Initiative ‘Re-imagining the Centre’ (www.invernessoldtownart.co.uk); p15 Kirstie Allsopp image by Glenn Dearing; p17 Art & Social Media photography by Anne Madelen Kos on Blipfoto; p17 Rabbit image by digital designer John Butler on Central Station; p24-25 Rude Health lead image by Dagmar Vyhnalkova (www.behance.net/dashav). Special thanks to: Central Station, a global network for young artists based in Glasgow www.thisiscentralstation.com. Blipfoto, a daily photography blog based in Edinburgh www.blipfoto.com.
Contact For more information on Channel 4 in the creative cities, please contact: Channel 4 Television (Nations & Regions) 227 West George Street Glasgow, G2 2ND t: 0141 568 7105 e: nmore@channel4.co.uk www.channel4.com www.4producers.co.uk Design by White Light Media www.whitelightmedia.co.uk