Alumni Membership
Industry Next Steps
Completed a BFI Film Academy? Then you’re our BFI Hub alumni!
If you are based in the West Midlands, Rural Media offers you free membership: sessions, activities, experiences and opportunities built to grow your skills, your understanding of how the industry works, and your confidence to progress into film, TV and the creative industries.
Launching in September
We are opening the membership year in September with an online launch event: what is coming up, how to get on it, and the people running it. Register with the Hub and we will send you the date and how to join.
What membership gives you
How the industry actually works
Get inside the roles that make up a crew, and what it really takes to land one. Straight from people doing those jobs now: how they got in, what they wish someone had told them, and an honest read on which routes are worth your time.
Industry Mixers
An evening of film and good company. A working filmmaker shows something they love and talks honestly about how their career really went, then everyone stays to talk. A proper night out, and one of the easiest ways to meet people who do this for a living.
Industry placements
Shadow and work alongside professionals on real productions: on set, in a festival programming office, wherever the work actually happens. Someone is there looking after you throughout. With Rural Studios, Flatpack Film Festival and BFI NETWORK.
First contact
Your CV and your portfolio are the first thing anyone sees of you, usually long before they meet you. How to make both of them land, including how to talk about work you did as one part of a crew, which is the bit everybody finds hard.
Essential freelancing
Most film and TV work is freelance, and nobody hands you a guide to it. Rates, invoices, tax and the admin side, so the business bit stops being the thing that catches you out.
Looking after yourself
Working with the Film & TV Charity on how to stay well in an industry of long hours and short contracts. Spotting when something is not right, knowing what you are entitled to, and where to go for real support.
Dates for everything above go up on the membership platform as they are confirmed, so you always know what is next.
Join our community
Membership exists to help you progress into the industry. The sessions, the placements and the people you meet are all pointed at getting you closer to the work.
Our community is where that carries on between events. It is a film community: a space to ask questions openly and tap into the experience of people a few steps ahead of you, and to learn from how their journeys actually went so you can shape your own.
Travel bursaries help you get to alumni events, so you can be there in person.
Our community space is for members aged 18 and over, and opens later this year. Everything else here is open to every member from the start.
Completed a BFI Film Academy? Register with the Hub and we will tell you the moment membership opens.
On a BFI Film Academy Introductory Course right now? Membership is yours when you finish the year.
Not done a course yet?
Start with a BFI Film Academy Introductory Course, free, over seven days spread across a month, exploring real crew roles on a real film, then a year of industry-focused support.