Filmhouse – Open the Doors!

Hello everyone,

And a warm and grateful 'welcome aboard' to all those who have first made a donation in recent months.

With the festive season swiftly approaching, we thought it would be good to send you all an update about progress towards opening the doors at Filmhouse. There's been a lot going on! 

We are pleased to announce that we have appointed four new Board Members, who bring varied expertise to Filmhouse’s governance. They are:

- Joe Tree: designer and start-up expert; founder of Blipfoto.

- Lizzie Francke: former EIFF Director, former BFI Senior Production & Development Executive and currently Head of Directing Fiction MA at NFTS.

- Flore Cosquer: Director of Scottish Documentary Institute.

- Katie Corrigan: Head of Real Estate at Vialex – our ‘legal eagle’. 

We will be advertising for a further tranche of Board Members very soon. (If you might be interested in this, stay tuned to Creative Scotland Opportunities and LinkedIn.) 

Regarding executive leadership and management for the ongoing organisation, we’re aiming to appoint the Executive Director very soon, as well as a Café-bar Manager. Announcements about these first appointments will follow as soon as possible. Make sure you’re signed up to our social media channels for frequent news updates.

Talking of social media, we’ve decided to leave Twitter. BlueSky is our new home for short form social media posting. Find us at: https://bsky.app/profile/filmhouseedinburgh.bsky.social

Meanwhile, we have appointed a building contractor to take on the refurbishment work. This is a landmark moment! We secured Listed Building Consent for the internal refurbishment in October, and the essential Building Warrant is also now in hand, so it’s all go at 88 Lothian Road. As we search for our hard hats, we’re signing off myriad details – even finally deciding on the carpet for you all to sink into on your return...! 

We’re still wrestling with all the things that will inform our actual opening date but we know this will be in the Spring. We’ll let you know as soon as we have more exact information – we are not saying anything just now as we're so near to actually nailing it down.

Alongside all of the above, we’re excited to be working with Hillside Agency on a new brand design. Look out for an evolved modern logo…

We continue to fundraise and welcome any donations to the Crowdfunder. We’re repeating our successful Gift Donation scheme for this Christmas. If you’d like to donate to Filmhouse as a gift to friends or family for Christmas (or any other reason!), you can find details on our website, and we’ll also circulate details to our mailing list and on social media.

In the New Year, we’ll have an accurate picture of any gap there is in the budget – for example, due to an increase in the costs of building materials in recent months – and we will be fundraising to fill it. 

So, all in all, we’re getting nearer to opening the doors! And we look forward to keeping you up to speed on progress.

Warm thanks once again to each and every one of you who has contributed to the cause. We could not have achieved what we have without your support.

Wishing you all the compliments of the season!

The Filmhouse Team