New community film festival for Scunthorpe
Shepherd Creative is to launch Lincs Film Fest, a new annual film festival rooted in Scunthorpe and the wider Lincolnshire community, with its first festival taking place on 20th November 2026.
The North Lincolnshire-based production company behind a growing slate of short films and documentary work, Shepherd Creative, has secured £5,000 in Cultural Futures funding from North Lincolnshire Council to launch the festival, which will bring together film screenings and practical filmmaking workshops, giving local audiences a first taste of what Lincs Film Fest can become, and building the momentum and evidence needed to grow the festival year on year.
There will be a timetable released publicly showcasing what happens at each venue – the venues involved are 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe Central Library, Fountain Arts and Café Indie.
The vision for Lincs Film Fest is to create an annual celebration of film that is genuinely rooted in Lincolnshire: community-led and accessible, focused on northern storytelling, and built around lifting up emerging and underrepresented filmmakers. The full festival programme will bring together film screening filmmaker Q&As, participatory workshops covering camera, lighting, and production arts, and community events designed to reach audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
Joe Shepherd, Director, says: “North Lincolnshire has real creative talent, real stories worth telling, and audiences hungry for something that speaks to them. Lincs Film Fest is about building something that belongs to this community not just a screening programme, but a genuine platform for the voices that deserve to be heard.”
As a neurodiverse-led organisation, Shepherd Creative is committed to building a festival that reflects the full diversity of the communities it serves. Programming will actively champion work by and for people who are underrepresented in mainstream cinema, including people of colour, LGBTQ+ individuals, disabled people, and working-class communities. Accessibility both in terms of venue choice and ticket pricing will be central to the festival’s design from the outset.
Alongside the November event, Shepherd Creative is also carrying out a wider programme of work to grow the festival: a public town hall in Scunthorpe, venue mapping across the region, community consultation to shape the programme, and development of a skills workshop strand in partnership with local schools, colleges, and youth organisations. Shepherd Creative is already in early partnership conversations with Know Film, Foundation Arts, and Vue Cinema.
A major funding application to deliver the first full edition of Lincs Film Fest will be submitted by February 2027, with the aim of launching the festival in 2027 as a permanent fixture in North Lincolnshire’s cultural calendar.
The project has been made possible with the support of North Lincolnshire Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund as part of Cultural Futures, a multi-year initiative to increase arts, heritage and cultural opportunities for North Lincolnshire.
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