Dublin’s Irish Film Institute (IFI) have won the third annual Europa Cinemas' Innovation Prize, for their groundbreaking Access Film Initiative.

Initiated with the support of Creative Europe/MEDIA, the Innovation Prize celebrates standout projects and approaches by network cinemas. It consists of an award of €10,000, and a commitment from the winner to use the money to invest further in the cinema’s innovation policy.

The IFI, located in the Temple Bar cultural quarter of Dublin, hosts film festivals, retrospectives and curated seasons, along with new and classic independent Irish and European releases. It is also home to the IFI Irish Film Archive, which houses Ireland’s national film archive of over 30,000 cans of film dating back to 1897.

Based on the principle of equal access, the Access Film Initiative originated in a piece of research supported by Arts Disability Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland that has been launched to make cultural cinema accessible to audiences with disabilities (deaf/hard of hearing or blind/vision impaired) through the inclusion of accessible screenings of new releases in the IFI monthly programme.

The project comprised a wide spectrum of elements such as regular accessible screenings, a building audit, technology upgrades, staff training, online audience survey, marketing and promotion of accessible screenings to relevant organisations, focus group meetings and evaluation, as well as best practice recommendations.

The winner was chosen by a Jury of four film experts – Christian Thomas (CEO, Distributor, Imagine Films, Belgium); Boglarka Nagy (Executive Director CICAE, Romania/Europe); Laura Houlgatte (CEO of UNIC, Belgium/Europe) and Jean-Marc Lalo (Architect, Atelier Architecture Lalo, France).

“The Access Film Initiative is framed within a social model of disability and is aimed at removing the barriers that have prevented blind/vision-impaired or deaf/HOH people from enjoying cultural cinema," the Jury commented. "This is an exemplary programme to engage audiences and can truly inspire other Network members or organisations wishing to develop their audiences through best practice guidelines. Together with Europa Cinemas, the Jury unanimously congratulates the Irish Film Institute for this well-deserved prize.”

"IFI is delighted to receive the third annual Europa Cinemas Innovation Prize," Ross Keane, IFI's Director/CEO, remarked in a statement. "Making cinema accessible to the widest audience possible is one of our ongoing key strategic objectives, and this prize is a very welcome recognition of the work we have undertaken to date. We look forward to continuing and expanding upon this important initiative into 2021 and beyond."