Cinetopia has been bringing Edinburgh’s film community together since 2018: monthly documentary clubs, industry networking nights, outdoor festivals, pop-up screenings, a radio show and a newsletter. What it did not have was anywhere for that community to exist between events. Film workers, and especially freelancers outside London, kept telling them the same things: information scattered everywhere, networks hard to build, opportunities buried in Facebook groups and WhatsApp chats, and an industry that felt closed to anyone without an introduction. In 2024 Cinetopia won Innovate UK research and development funding and surveyed more than 100 people across the industry, with 12 in-depth interviews, to work out what a digital answer would have to do. Then they came to us to build it.
A responsive web app that takes a community built at events since 2018 online, designed from Innovate UK-funded research with more than 100 film workers.
01
The start
A community that only existed on the night
02
The journey
A web app, built to be looked at
Cinetopia Connect is a web app, responsive on a phone, with no app store between a member and the platform. Members build a profile, find and connect with the right people and organisations, look for collaborators and mentors, and browse film events near them. Organisations and brands post events and opportunities: jobs, courses, funding, mentorships. Cinetopia’s audience is people who make pictures for a living, so the platform had to look as good as the events feel, and it does.
03
The result
Offline since 2018, online since 2025
Cinetopia’s own headline for it. The platform launched in 2025 as the online half of a community that had been meeting in rooms for seven years.
- Web app, responsive, nothing to download
- Profiles, connections, collaborators and mentors
- Events and opportunities posted by film organisations and brands
- Designed from Innovate UK-funded research: 100+ survey responses, 12 interviews
- Launched 2025
