Yorkshire and North East Film Archives Named "Company of the Year" at Last Night's FOCAL Awards

Host Sally Phillips and award presenter Ben Jones of Science Photo Library with Megan McCooley and Graham Felton of Yorkshire and North East Archives.

Yorkshire and North East Film Archives, a UK-based film archive, was named Company of the Year at last night’s FOCAL Awards. As the sponsor of this year’s Company of the Year Award, we would like to congratulate the team at Yorkshire and North East Film Archives on their win, as well as all the companies nominated for this year’s award, all of whom deserve recognition for their work in expanding the horizons of the footage industry. The Company of the Year Award, one of 15 awards handed out at last night’s live awards gala, recognizes an audio-visual company that has introduced an exemplary new service, initiative, or improvement since January 2020 to the benefit of their business and clients.

“The whole team at the Yorkshire and North East Film Archives are delighted to receive this FOCAL Company of the Year Award,” said Graham Relton, Archive Manager, Yorkshire and North East Film Archives. “Connecting audiences to the footage that we care for is at the very heart of what we do, so it is great to be recognized for how we have transformed how we facilitate and deliver to storytellers. We might be a small charity, but we have big ambitions and we look forward to supporting more and more artists, filmmakers, musicians, researchers, archive producers and production companies across the world. Our vaults contain thousands of films and in every can are thousands more stories waiting to be revealed.’

The Yorkshire and North East Film Archives team, from left to right: Megan McCooley, Collections Manager; Clare Morrow, chair of the Board of Trustees; Ben Jones of Science Photo Library, who presented the award on behalf of Footage.net; Graham Relton, Archives Manager, and Sue Howard, the recently retired Director of Yorkshire and North East Film Archives.

Operating from bases in both York and Middlesbrough, the Yorkshire and North East Film Archive is focused on “collecting, curating and creating access to [their] regions' screen heritage collections,” and has “over 70,000 items of original film, video tape, and born-digital material” under its care. A registered charity, Yorkshire and North East Film Archives have also developed award-winning products such as the Memory Bank, a reminiscence tool for older people.

FOCAL’s Company of the Year Award highlights the accomplishments, innovations and positive impact of a FOCAL company member - as voted on by a special jury. The other nominees for this year’s Company of the Year Award were Frames Dealer, LOLA Clips and R3Store Studios.

Past winners of FOCAL’s Company of the Year Award include Reelin in the Years Productions (2020), Screenocean (2019), ITV Archive (2018) and British Pathé (2017). FOCAL did not give out awards in 2021 to Company or Footage Person of the Year as it was felt that with the ongoing pandemic it would be wrong to single out one company or person for honors as everyone was working extremely hard under very difficult circumstances.