The UK’s screen heritage sector plays a vital role in preserving, interpreting and providing access to film and moving image collections. However, the workforce faces a range of skills challenges, including the loss of heritage and legacy-format skills as experienced staff retire, gaps in digital capacity, limited formal training routes and the impact of rapid technological change.

Through its National Lottery Research and Statistics Fund, the British Film Institute (BFI) commissioned Harlow Consulting to undertake research to build a clearer understanding of workforce needs in the screen heritage sector. The aim was to provide an evidence base that could help employers, policymakers, trade bodies, funders, and training and education providers target future skills and recruitment interventions more effectively.

Harlow Consulting designed and delivered a mixed-methods research programme. The work included a scoping review of literature, international and cross-sector comparisons, training and qualifications mapping, an online survey, scoping interviews, depth interviews and international stakeholder interviews.

The research found that entry routes and training pathways into screen heritage are diffuse. There is currently no dedicated screen heritage-specific higher education route in the UK, although aspects of screen heritage appear within some university programmes. Without clear educational or professional pathways, work experience remains important, but unpaid volunteering and placements can be inaccessible for people without the resources to undertake them.

The study also found strong appetite for training, but highly varied needs and uneven access. Priority areas included digital skills, AI tools, celluloid projection, operating and maintaining obsolete machines and players, photochemical laboratory skills, digital preservation, environmental sustainability planning, fundraising, rights clearance and contemporary or born-digital collecting.

Harlow Consulting’s analysis showed that knowledge sharing is highly valued across the sector. Conferences, mentoring, informal peer-to-peer learning and workplace-based knowledge exchange were seen as especially effective, but the research also found that these practices are less structured in the UK than in some international contexts.

The final report set out a series of recommendations grouped around three themes: support for the industry, entry routes and industry training. The research provides the BFI and the wider screen heritage sector with a detailed evidence base to inform future investment, policy and training design. It highlights the need for targeted, practical and accessible interventions to sustain specialist skills, open up routes into the sector and support the long-term preservation of the UK’s moving image heritage.