Dr James Cateridge

Inspector Morse fans who visit Oxford to follow in the footsteps of their detective hero demonstrate an imaginative overlapping between place and character which can also be illustrated by user-generated online maps and photo-sharing services.

How can the UK’s screen industries become better, more responsible employers in the face of continual challenges including endemic precarity, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis? What roles can mentoring play? Studies have demonstrated the value of mentoring within creative enterprises in relation to both personal career development and increasing equitable access to creative occupations (Grugulis and Stoyanova, 2012; NESTA, 2014). However, these accounts offer only a limited depiction of the huge variety of mentoring practice which exists across the variegated set of industries which constitute the UK's creative sector. This paper draws upon survey data generated in 2022 by an interdisciplinary research project which was supported by policy body Creative UK. Whilst data was collected from across all creative industries, the screen industries offer a particularly useful case study due to the often precarious nature of employment for workers in this sector. Our investigation offers a new understanding of the nature of mentoring programme provision and the challenges the screen industries face in developing sustainable initiatives since the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings indicate that while many mentoring schemes are designed to tackle the barriers of inequality for new entrants and existing employees, their outcomes are often compromised by sectoral precarity in the creative industries. This paper was co-authored with Dr Judie Gannon and Dr Silvia Dibeltulo of Oxford Brookes University and presented by Dr James Cateridge.

The Ultimate Picture Palace is Oxford’s only truly independent cinema, and has a long and tumultuous history stretching back over a century. In 1911 it was the city’s first purpose-built picturehouse serving a thriving working class audience in the industrial area of Cowley. Much later in the 1970s it was resurrected as an art-house fleapit which was infamous for late-night (and occasionally illegal) screenings of controversial films. Today its restored art deco frontage appeals to a much more genteel crowd, and its business model has been transformed by entering into community ownership in 2022.

In this paper, I re-think the history of The Ultimate Picture Palace in terms of the shifting demographics of its audience, and more broadly in relation to the evolving cultural status of cinema exhibition in the UK. This project is inspired by the New Cinema History movement (Maltby et. al, 2011), and in particular the sociological microhistory approach described by Judith Thissen (2013). I also examine the role of amateur historians, photographers and filmmakers within the Oxford knowledge economy (Edwards, 2012). Finally,  I reflect on the current community-owned status of the cinema in relation to its radically different historical incarnations.

This report builds upon the 2019 report “Many Things to Many People: Formal Mentoring schemes and their management” (Gannon & Washington, 2019) but focuses specifically on mentoring in the Creative Industries (CIs). As a diverse and fragmented collection of sectors, success in the CIs is dependent upon the innovation and development of new businesses, and the entry and professional development of new and existing participants. Mentoring is often at the heart of these developments and innovations (Nesta, 2020; Paquette, 2012; Grugulis and Stoyanova 2012). However, there is limited understanding of the breadth, depth, quality and availability of mentoring provision in the CIs. For example, we know little about mentoring at: different levels (school leavers, graduate entrants, business support, mid-career and executive); across different sectors (fine art, design, film, music) or the purpose of these schemes (widening participation, improving diversity, career development, business development).

In June 2021, an interdisciplinary team comprised of members from the Creative Industries Research & Innovation Network (CIRIN) and the International Centre for Coaching & Mentoring Studies (ICCAMS) in Oxford Brookes University, secured funding from the university’s internal Research Excellence 2021 awards to pursue this investigation. The team partnered with Creative UK to extend the reach of engagement with the CIs. As an interdisciplinary, collaborative project with industry partners, this study offers a timely opportunity to identify and nurture existing mentoring provision and promote good practice.