About Northern Light
Creative and screen businesses in Northern Ireland are demonstrating significant potential with ambitions to grow at pace and strengthen their market position within a rapidly advancing global screen economy.
Yet many face common challenges including high production costs, market uncertainty in IP development, infrastructure and resource constraints and limited access to niche expertise. These challenges are being felt by creative and screen enterprises globally.
However Northern Irish screen businesses have a significant opportunity within their local ecosystem. Through support from Studio Ulster, Ulster Screen Academy and CoSTAR Screen Lab, they have a unique pathway for de-risking new IP development and building sustainable businesses in their local economy.
The Northern Light Incubator is a six month business acceleration programme, designed to support the growth of creative and screen enterprises in the Belfast region. Anchored at CoSTAR Screen Lab at Studio Ulster, Northern Light will provide companies with targeted hands-on expert support, access to industry leading facilities and mentorship to explore advanced media production tools in IP development and accelerate new market opportunities.
For screen businesses, this provides an opportunity to derisk advances into new areas, test and validate new ideas whilst Northern Light fills in the gaps by covering the critical factors businesses need to know when making the leap into VP and developing new production workflows and pipelines.
Northern Light is designed to upskill and build a solid understanding of what advanced media production is.
- Upskill Northern Irelands film and TV studios in advanced media production content origination, development and production via mentoring and de-risked access to facilities.
- Arm creative content companies with the insight, skills and expertise to extend their practice and business into new areas in emerging technology.
- Provide mentorship and bespoke training aimed at the unique and individual needs of each business.
- Enable on set practical experimentation and training
- Identify follow-on developmental training capacity building opportunities.
- Strengthen business models and commercial capabilities so that participating companies emerge investor-ready and growth-focused.
