C21’s Nico Franks on his key takeaways from last week’s Creative Cities Convention, an event dedicated to people making film, TV and digital content outside London.

Left to right, moderator Mobeen Azharm, Lisa Campbell and AA Dhand

Charlie Swinbourne

A conference held at Bradford’s National Science & Media Museum, the same museum I regularly visited as a child, whose brilliant exhibitions piqued my young brain’s interest in all things film and TV, was always going to feel like a must attend event.

However, for many in the UK media industry, attending the Creative Cities Convention (CCC) in a city with no major TV production company may have seemed low priority. Bradford, after all, spent a decade post-2008 with its city centre defined by an infamous construction pit, a symbol of underinvestment in northern English cities in the wake of the financial crash.

But that was then. This year, Bradford is the UK’s City of Culture and home to the youngest population of any major UK city – with 29% under 20, and nearly a quarter under 16. It’s also one of the most diverse cities in the country, and while it’s not yet known as a production hub, it’s rich in something the UK TV industry desperately needs in 2025: fresh voices, exciting energy and untapped talent.

Bradford awaits its first TV production company
CCC rotates cities annually, with previous hosts including Leeds, Cardiff, Birmingham, Newcastle and Bristol. Bradford, despite being the first UNESCO City of Film, lacks a single established TV production company. There was a clear sense of frustration at CCC over this absence, another gaping hole in the city that needs filling.

Recent BBC crime drama Virdee, set and filmed in Bradford and created by local writer AA Dhand, was a first for the city and sparked the creation of Screen Academy Bradford to nurture off-screen talent. As the BBC’s first crime drama series featuring a British Asian lead, it’s also gone some way to address what Dhand called “clichéd and stereotypical” representations of South Asian people on UK screens. But more is needed.

“It’s a scandal and shames us all that Bradford doesn’t have a film and TV company in the same way you see Bad Wolf in Wales or Red in Manchester,” said Tracy Brabin, the Mayor of West Yorkshire who was an actress and television writer prior to entering politics.

Brabin said she is working with local creatives, the council and Bradford City of Culture to remedy this, while director Dominic Leclerc and producer Ameenah Ayub Allen, whose credits between them include episodes of Sex Education and Rocks, are being tipped to set up shop in the city.

Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin

Charlie Swinbourne

Leclerc told C21 the company, which is yet to officially launch but has the working title of New Northern, is developing a slate of “filmic” TV series and feature projects that “celebrate outsiders.” More details are set to be revealed soon, C21 understands.

During the Industrial Revolution, it was said London was “paved with Yorkshire gold” – a nod to the sandstone exported south. Today, that gold comes in the form of creative talent. Countless Northern storytellers and creatives have moved to London to build careers in the industry – a migration that has long sustained the capital’s cultural dominance.

Mike Benson, creative director at London-based Chalkboard and a proud Bradfordian, put it plainly: “It’s a huge, beautiful, creative and diverse city that deserves a thriving production ecosystem. I hope events like this will be a springboard.”

Meanwhile, the north’s brain drain continues, with developments like MediaCity in Salford and Channel 4’s move to Leeds only partially addressing the imbalance.

But change is coming. The Brit School North, set to open in Bradford in 2028 – the first Brit School outside London – will offer courses in dance, music, and theatre. This kind of long-term investment in youth will help retain talent. Now the region needs production companies to keep graduates working locally.

Channel 4 defends its nations and regions record
Channel 4 used CCC to renew its nations and regions vows, hosting an informal networking lunch with indies following the appointment of head of lifestyle Jo Street as director of commissioning for the nations and regions and a £35m (US$46.5m) commissioning boost for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A common bugbear among producers is that for all the hundreds of Channel 4 employees now based in the UK’s nations and regions, key decision-making power remains in London. To try and address this in the long-term, the commercially-funded public service broadcaster (PSB) is searching for three junior commissioning editors, to be based in Bristol, Leeds and Glasgow, as part its 4Skills programme and to create a pipeline of commissioning talent.

Lucy Smith, founder at Leeds-based Fawkes Digital

Charlie Swinbourne

But wouldn’t it be great, asked Will Rowson, creative director at Dragonfly North, to his former colleague, Channel 4’s nations and regions head, Sinéad Rocks, if the next CEO at Channel 4 could be based in Leeds?

“That would be nice wouldn’t it. Yes. Is it going to happen? It depends where the successful candidate lives. I would welcome more execs from all broadcasters to be based outside of London, because the more senior decision makers you have outside of London, the quicker sector-wide change can be delivered,” said Rocks.

Elsewhere during the session, titled ‘What now for Channel 4 in the North?’, Rocks defended the broadcaster’s nations and regions record so far, as some indies complain of a lack of progress.

“We need to be financially sustainable and we think really carefully about what we’re doing. There have been times where I’ve been frustrated and wanted us to do more and go faster. So it’s totally understandable that we’ve had a mixed response. But the feedback we get is by and large positive,” said Rocks.

‘Dark forces’ at play in DEI cutbacks
During the ‘CCC does Question Time’ session, bosses at All3Media and Paramount-owned 5 in the UK pledged to uphold their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategies in the face of recent rollbacks in the US.

These have left DEI bosses at broadcasters and streamers “petrified,” said Marcus Ryder, CEO of The Film & TV Charity, who called for more leaders to remember the pledges they made five years ago, when the murder of George Floyd sparked mass protests around the world.

A question time style panel debate at <em>Creative Cities Convention</em>

Lou Wilcock

It was one of numerous panels expertly moderated by presenter, journalist and filmmaker Mobeen Azharm, who said that anecdotally there is a growing feeling in the industry among people of colour that there has been a contraction in the level of support they’re receiving since Trump returned to office.

Sarah Rose, president of 5 and UK regional lead at US media giant Paramount, said there are “dark forces” at work, while Jane Turton, CEO of European production and distribution giant All3Media, said the developments were “concerning,” but both added that they remain committed to upholding the DEI strategies at their companies.

Ryder agreed there is a perception that DEI initiatives are under threat on both sides of the Atlantic. He welcomed Turton and Rose’s comments while calling for others in the industry to do the same, adding that more still needs to be done to make the UK industry more representative.

“We need to address that perception because that perception is having serious mental health effects on all the black, brown, disabled and working-class people working in the industry,” said Ryder.

“So if we want to protect their mental health, we need to hear they are absolutely not going to roll back. It’s great to hear what you’re both saying. We need more people in positions of power to say what they said five years ago.”

YouTube looms large as ‘delusional’ TV model called out
As BBC director general Tim Davie told CCC delegates of the crisis facing the UK PSB funding model, it was hard not to think back to the previous session, where Lucy Smith, founder at Leeds-based Fawkes Digital discussed producing pilots for under £250 to audible gasps from the audience.

It’s symptomatic of the entertainment industry in 2025 where the cost of what people are watching in their living rooms on YouTube could be made for the price of a trip to the shops, while something on Apple TV+ will set you back the GDP of a small nation.

Producers’ heads must be spinning trying to budget their shows in such a financially elastic world and you can empathise with the growing number producers launching IP on social media when it takes broadcasters so long to make commissioning decisions.

Traditional TV remains snail-paced compared to the likes of YouTube, which is in the fortunate position of not having to pay for any of its content or worry too much whether or not it’s harmful. If it is, they can just take it down. Whereas if any of the UK PSBs were to air one minute of a video that would get flagged by YouTube’s moderators, the outrage would be enormous. It’s an uneven playing field and a clear solution isn’t in sight.

But UK PSBs can help themselves by speeding up their decision-making processes, putting their trust in young, working-class talent and distributing their content more widely online. In the meantime, producers like Fawkes Digital are forging ahead and looking to connect their formats with audiences on YouTube, TikTok and even LinkedIn.

The gatekeepers are still there – but increasingly, they’re optional. As Smith put it: “Anyone can be a commissioner.” For creatives in a city like Bradford who have been historically excluded by the traditional TV system, that’s not a threat. It’s a call to action.