Regional Screen Scotland

Regional Screen Scotland (RSS) helps communities to enjoy great screen experiences.

We do this by:

- Providing advice and information on setting up local screen facilities
- Operating the Screen Machine mobile cinema
- Managing a grant aid fund for Local Film Festivals across Scotland
- Advocates for the social and economic benefits of cinema for local communities

We provide information, advice, contacts, and support to both individuals and organisations seeking either to start or to develop opportunities for cinema going in their communities. We’re committed to helping to bring people together to share and enjoy exciting, high quality screening experiences, where they live.

Digital technologies are making possible a huge range of new and different screen experiences, whether that’s gaining access to classic movies and films from across the world, exploring local history through archive film, sharing live performances in the form of ‘event cinema’, or showcasing local talent and community projects.

At Regional Screen Scotland we work particularly with those communities, across Scotland, which have no access—or only very limited access– to the full range of screening possibilities. We help to develop this access through working with a range of partners, from Film Hub Scotland to the UK Cinema Association and from Cinema for All to Film Mobile Scotland.

Our history...

Regional Screen Scotland was set up in 2008 as an initiative of Scottish Screen, which was one of the predecessors of Creative Scotland. RSS was intended to be the regional and rural counterpart of four city-based ‘hubs’, Glasgow Film Theatre, Edinburgh’s Centre for the Moving Image, Dundee Contemporary Arts, and Eden Court in Inverness. RSS was created for Scottish Screen by HI~Arts, the cultural development agency for the Highlands and Islands. HI~Arts had originally launched the Screen Machine mobile cinema in 1998, and then commissioned a second such vehicle in 2005, and the operation and ownership of this Screen Machine was transferred to the new agency, and still forms a core part of RSS’s remit today.

RSS’s launch coincided with the rapid expansion of digital projection, from multiplexes to film societies, and one of RSS’s main tasks in those first years was to help with the setting up of these new technologies, including managing a grant scheme for community projectors on behalf of Scottish Screen.

That original ‘hub’ model envisaged by the former Scottish Screen has developed into an independent consortium, Scottish Film, of which RSS is a founder member together with the four city-based venues. That consortium was successful in securing funding to be the Scottish member of the British Film Institute’s Film Audience Network, which led to the setting up of Film Hub Scotland, originally hosted by RSS.

In 2014 Regional Screen Scotland was successful in securing Regular Funding status from Creative Scotland, and our programme is also supported by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, given the touring area covered by the Screen Machine, and the number of groups and film festivals which we work with in the Highlands and Islands.

RSS employs a small office-based team of five, all working part time, two full time Driver/Operators for the Screen Machine, and a network of local Screen Machine Ushers across the Highlands and Islands. As a company limited by guarantee and recognised as a Scottish Charity, RSS is managed by a voluntary Board of Trustees who are drawn from across Scotland, and from the different areas of RSS’s remit, including film exhibition and community development.

Get in touch...

If you have a question, need advice or have any other query then get in touch with us and we will see how we can help.

Regional Screen Scotland is run by a team of part time staff. The office is staffed between 10:00am to 2:00pm Monday to Thursday.