What does work look like for you now?
Here’s how it is at Screenworks – the team has been working from home for the past month, we meet weekly on Zoom and chat daily via Messenger. We are all available via email and continue to support our members and regional practitioners in a range of innovative and resourceful ways.
We have repurposed all our programs and events to work in an online environment. In this past month, we have launched 5 initiatives:
1) Write from Home Screenwriting Workshop, an international mentorship program for screenwriters in partnership with the Australian Screen Forum in New York (applications currently open)
2) The Art and Science of Pitching with Holly Lyons – two sold-out series of online workshops
3) Recipients have been announced for the Screen Composing Bootcamp program supported by APRA AMCOS
4) The COVID-19 Response Small Grants Program is currently open for applications
5) Business of Producing Highlights Online with Rachel Gardner and Stephen Oliver, with more to be announced
We continue to support the selected 2020 participants through Screenworks’ Regional Producer Elevator, the Director Pathways Program and Inside the Writers Room. We are speaking with many of Australia’s leading production companies about how they are adapting to new ways of working, with many writers rooms going online and production companies being in a period of intense development. Most of the Fearless Films teams have completed their filming and we have been receiving rough cuts from them over the past fortnight which has been exciting and encouraging. Unfortunately, a couple of the projects’ filming schedules have been impacted and so are now on hold until the current situation changes, but sadly there is no real production work of note happening in regional Australia at the moment (or anywhere in Australia).
As the CEO I am focussing on keeping up to date with the daily changes happening within the industry, keeping abreast of the support being offered by Screen Australia and each of the state and territory funding bodies. We’re also reviewing the ‘platform neutral’ media framework paper released by Screen Australia and ACMA this week. For Screenworks and its members, the Board and I are looking at new systems and programs for our events, our website and our directory during this period and into the future and looking for the gaps where we can best support our members and the industry more broadly.
We are very interested to hear from you about how the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has affected our members and the people that we support in regional Australia. We strongly encourage you to complete our short survey – https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ScreenworksCOVID19
Ken Crouch, Screenworks CEO
