Creative Cities

The Channel 4 success story

Creative CitiesChannel 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 CosgroveDirector Nations and RegionsChannel 4

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Kings of Comedy

Frankie Boyle, GlasgowRhod Gilbert, Carmarthen

Liam Hourican, Belfast Peter Kay, Bolton

Creative Cities

Kings of Comedy

Max and Paddy, Bolton

Karl Pilkington, Manchester

Leigh Francis, Leeds

Father Ted, Craggy Island

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Real LivesChannel 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 Air Hospital: Glasgow

The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off: Newcastle

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The Boy Who Was Born a Girl: Cardiff

The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off: Newcastle

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Power & Conflict

Creative Cities

Hunger: Belfast

Mo: 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.

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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.

TrainspottingGlasgow/Edinburgh, 1996

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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.

Hit Shows

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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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Art Gallery

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.

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.

Creative Cities

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 self-portraits from Blipfoto are above.

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Lesbian KissWhen 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.

Liverpool , 1993

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Inner City BluesChannel 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 hip-hop. 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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Gas Attack: Glasgow

Disarming Britain: Manchester

1 Day: Birmingham

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Explosive Drama

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 award-winning Red Riding – a dark trilogy of films set in Yorkshire in the 1970s and ‘80s – brings all of these elements into play.

Red Riding: Yorkshire

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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.

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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.

Bolton, 2001

Phoenix Nights

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MadchesterHappy 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

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.

Queer as Folk: Manchester

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24 Hour Party People: Manchester

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1996

Role in cult hit Trainspotting

2006

Films C4 Bafta-winning film Boy A

2009

Plays Martin Laws in noir trilogy Red Riding

2010

Directs feature-film Neds for Film4

Role in Shallow Grave

1994

Stars in My Name is Joe

1998 2002

Writes and directs first fllm, The Magdalene Sisters

Peter Mullan

Talent Across Time

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1998

Makes Film4 debut in The Acid House

2003 2007 20082004–6

Stars in C4 drama The Book Group

Plays Sue White in C4 comedy Green Wing

Lead role in Irvine Welsh drama Wedding Belles

Joins Royal Shakespeare Company

Michelle Gomez

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This is EnglandStarring Thomas Turgoose

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Indie Film

Dead Man’s ShoesStarring Paddy Considine

Last King of ScotlandStarring Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy

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.

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Monkey Love: Belfast/Wisconsin

World StageChannel 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.

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The First Movie: Edinburgh/Iraq

Beauty Queens and Bloodshed: Glasgow/Nigeria

Frank GallagherFrank 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.

Manchester, 2004

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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.

…the world being created here is new, not neophile, not in love with its own novelty, but young, fresh…

Skins: Bristol

Live Fast

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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 CreditsChannel 4 would like to thank all the artists featured in this brochure. Cover image by Brian Sweeney & ISO/Central Station; p3 Tellyfish image by Dundee-based 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

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