What is AV-Growth?
AV Growth is a three-year project focusing on international growth and scaling up AV companies in the Central Baltic region in Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia. 24 companies overall will beselected to the project and their growth strategies and opportunities will be developed in the project with different kinds of workshops, mentoring and collaboration, new growth tools and cross-border productions.
The project partners are Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Business Tampere/Film Tampere and YNFT - Yrkesnämnden för Film och TV, and funded by Interreg Europe.
AV-Growth has three content work packages focused on the following key issues to support scaling-up and making a change in the field;
WP1 Scaling-up Growth of Companies by Workshops, Matchmaking and Mentoring
The main results include scaling-up growth of the companies (=attracted investment, developed new business model, expanded team, added revenue, etc.) by 1) enhancing the availability of relevant production resources, 2) developing production methods, business models and skills, 3) being able to offer services for bigger clients and markets and increasing the number of profitable productions.
WP2 Implementing New Growth Tools for Cross-Border Productions
A growth tool, the Crew Call for Growth Companies (CCGC) service platform, is developed and documented. CCGC opens doors for cross-border AV Productions and can be applied and utilised by AV companies and educational institutions. The platform includes tools for the recognition of AV sector companies and their staff's skill sets and for sharing production resources to scale-up growth.
WP3 Joint Cross-Border AV Production Model and a Pilot Production
The new cross-border production model and pilot AV production will help to transfer the results of the scaling-up actions and methods to target groups. The model can be utilized in other cross-sectoral AV productions as well, but piloting is done to transfer scaling-up methods and results to AV sector companies and other stakeholders in the Central Baltic region to help them scale-up their growth.
Background
The traditional Film and TV industry is globally in radical change due to major streaming services, digitalization and a shift in value creation chain. From the companies this demands implementation of new business models and technologies, expanding foreign networks and strengthening skills in strategy, sales and financing.
Creating cross-border solutions is needed to scale-up growth by opening possibilities for more regular and bigger business opportunities in large international AV productions. This includes sharing growth companies' and partners' resources and knowledge within the project network, as well as mentoring and advising. These actions will directly benefit AV production startups and growth companies, the AV industry ecosystem in the Central Baltic region and all involved in the production pipeline directly or indirectly especially in Finland and Sweden.
Goal
Growth for FINSWE Film and TV Companies (AV-GROWTH) project will run from 2024 to 2027. The lead Partner Tampere University of Applied Sciences works in deep collaboration with project partners Film Tampere (FI) and Swedish Audiovisual Industry Skills (SE) to support growth of AV and creative sector businesses.
The overall aim is to support AV and creative sector growth companies to respond to the existing demand related to handling of incoming big international productions and attracting more large-scale productions to Nordic and Baltic countries.
The project strives to tackle the lack of local, regional and national production resources, skills, equipment, facilities, and international networks, especially in the Film and TV Industry in Finland and Sweden. The key activities include implementing a growth programme for a pool of AV/Creative companies (e.g. matchmaking with investors and buyers, mentoring); to create a new cross-border AV production model; and to support the use of digital competence padges for skills standardization in the field.