Screen Agencies as Cultural Intermediaries:Negotiating and Shaping Cultural Policy for the Film and TV Industries within Selected Small Nations

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This study provides the first large-scale comparative study of screen agencies within seven small European nations. It assesses their impact on the outputs of our film and television industries and grows out of previous research of these nations and their creative sectors. It deepens and extends our critical understanding of the making of creative content and the ways in which cultural policy is shaped and enacted.The value of screen agencies as an object of study lies in their intervention in both economic and cultural goals for a country. Through their decision-making, allocation of resources and programmes of support, they potentially exercise significant power over their nation's cultural assets and outputs. Yet this power and the consequences of its application largely go unacknowledged by academics, unchallenged by screen professionals and invisible to audiences.The purpose of screen agencies is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public funding for screen-based industries, a sector well known for its distinct forms of public value but inherent riskiness. The agency model has become a legitimated and transferable policy structure with most Western nations having some form of screen agency network. Their most visible support is their direct funding of creative projects, a role that has become more pronounced as complex forms of co-production and co-financing become increasingly normalised within the production process. Here, the agency attempts to evaluate the riskiness of the project relying on its internal expertise about what will 'sell'. In this way the agency becomes an investor in the industry on behalf of the government and its taxpayers.A further role is to promote the quality of the country's creative capacity outside its borders. Screen agencies play a leading role in attracting lucrative forms of large-scale inward investment such as a Hollywood movie or big-budget television drama. To do this screen agencies are key lobbyist of government in areas such as fiscal incentive schemes (e.g. the UK's 'High End TV Tax Relief scheme' or 'Section 481' in Ireland).Finally, screen agencies often have a mandate to protect and promote the cultural heritage of a country including its language. The screen agency acts as a cultural gatekeeper ensuring 'appropriate' stories are told about and for the country, irrespective of their commercial potential. This can be delivered through its funding strategy, but also activities such as skills development or hosting screen archives relevant to that locale.Valuable research has been carried out on individual institutions (cf. Schlesinger et al 2015, Oakley et al 2014) and on the cultural policies from which these agencies emerge and are embedded (cf. Hesmondhalgh et al 2015, Bondebjerg 2016). However, in focusing on individual contexts the opportunity to discern commonalities and distinctions in the work of these agencies is lost. Furthermore, it limits a comprehensive understanding of cross-national approaches to cultural policy and provision. While individual context is important, many of the challenges regarding the riskiness of cultural production, the competitiveness of the global television and film industry, and the power exercised by Anglo-Saxon markets is common to many of the countries in this study. For this reason, we specifically draw on Bourdieu and his work on cultural intermediaries as the theoretical basis in order to reinvigorate questions of power within the process of cultural production. It is this question of power that also focuses our attention on the context of small nations who face specific structural challenges relating to their sustainability of their screen industries due to a smaller market for box office, advertising and license fee revenue. Here, the agency assumes an even more significant role navigating local expectations and a highly competitive, but potentially valuable, international market.