Our Story

Who We Are

Bridge + Tunnel Productions is an independent media production company that produces a range of unique, exciting and challenging projects, both mainstream and community-based.

Founded on a principle of producing work with uncomprimising creative vision and social relevance, our projects often revolve around themes of identity, migration and equality. Now in our tenth year, and with a growing international reputation, Bridge + Tunnel Productions' work is widely recognised for raising awareness and understanding of cultural diversity. Our team has over 30 years experience in the film production sector and our portfolio of award-winning work emcompasses ground-breaking documentaries, fiction, gallery and museum projects as well as feature films.

In addition to our film production work, our sister organisation, Bridge + Tunnel Voices, undertakes educational and charitable activities including the development and delivery of interactive online projects and training and production schemes for young people and diverse communities.

These schemes address racism, community cohesion, and issues relating to migrant communities.

Our Story

B+T was established in 1998 as a regional arts organisation focused on new talent, artistic experimentation and challenging the poverty of representation for diverse communities. In 2005, Bridge + Tunnel was established as a charity to undertake the education and charitable work under a new banner (Bridge + Tunnel Voices) and relevant structure. B+T, 10 years later, continues to challenge exclusion and promote diversity using innovative arts forms while bringing minority and niche stories to a mainstream audience.

B+T has worked over a period of time in the Region with BME communities, specifically focused on refugees and asylum seekers who were (and sadly continue to be) mispresented, under-represented and lack access. However, recently other arts agencies have begun to also address these groups. B+T’s reputation is strong and has many good partnership with other statutory and public service bodies in the Region. The partnership with Newcastle University grows in strength as the University embraces the outreach agenda.

At the heart of our work is a passion for empowering groups and individuals to help themselves and build their abilities, programmes and initiatives. B+T doesn’t seek to replicate the work other ‘larger’ arts organisations deliver. In fact, we pride ourselves at remaining agile, inventive, and able to take risks. We are very pleased that in 2008, this work has received core-funding support from the Baring Foundation.

In the recent past B+T have taken exhibitions and community stories to a wide audience (Last of the Dictionary Men, Asylum Carwash, Bread, Kite), trained refugees work skills (i-Kooch in School, where refugees gave drama workshops in schools), tackled Islamophobia (King of South Shields) and most recently, undertaken a major initiative to tackle racism, zenophobia, and looked to bring a social issue to a mainstream audience- a long narrative project with an interactive web education distribution element (Ali in Wonderland and Wiki: Wonderland). We remain devoted to education and training as a means for delivering change (Wiki: Wonderland).

The work of B+T in the mainstream media aspect continues to go from strength to strength: a grand prize at the TCM Awards at the London Film Festival (Perfect to Begin), documentaries broadcast internationally (Mother/Country) and screened at festivals such as the coveted Sundance Film Festival (Closer) as well as other all over the world. More impressively, the have been able to generated impressive audience figures working both with mainstream media and with new technology (I-Kooch, Wiki: Wonderland, and The King of South Shields). We pride ourselves at getting minority stories to a wide public.

Currently, Bridge + Tunnel is working on a host of productions and developing an independent feature film due to go into production in spring 2009.