CULTURE, CREATIVITY AND THE FUTURE OF EARL’S COURT
An interview with Tom Branton, Development Director, at The Earls Court Development Company as featured on the United Film Podcast, hosted by Gregory Randolph Jr.
The United Film Podcast exists to shine a light on emerging filmmakers and supporters of the creative industries, from London and right across the world. Host Gregory Randolph Jr. brings together the voices that are shaping the future of film and culture, from the artists making their first films to the people building the spaces and institutions that make creative life possible.
It was Caroline Tod-Richardson, Director of the Earl’s Court International Film Festival, who first made the introduction between Greg and Tom Branton, Development Director at The Earls Court Development Company. Caroline has been a consistent advocate for the creative life of Earl’s Court and for the people working within it. It is through that relationship, built on a shared belief in the power of culture and community, that this conversation came to life.
Caroline Tod-Richardson, Director of the Earl’s Court International Film Festival: “When I introduced Greg to Tom I knew it would be a worthwhile conversation. Both of them understand that creativity is not a luxury. It is the thing that makes a place worth living in. Tom has been a strong supporter of the Film Festival and of the broader creative ecosystem growing around Earl’s Court. Greg brings real generosity to his interviews and an ability to draw out the human story behind the professional one. I’m glad this conversation happened.”
Gregory Randolph Jr., Host, United Film Podcast: “Caroline spoke highly of Tom and of the Earls Court Development Company and I knew I had to have him on. My podcast is usually home to emerging filmmakers, so this was a deliberate step in a different direction, bringing in someone who is thinking about the city at a completely different scale. But what struck me in speaking with Tom is that the questions he is asking are not so different from the ones any filmmaker might ask. How do you build a community that lasts? How do you honour what came before while making space for what comes next? How do you create the conditions in which people and ideas can genuinely flourish? That felt very much at home on this podcast.”
In this episode, Greg sat down with Tom Branton for a conversation that gets to the heart of something every creative in London should understand: the city you are creating in is itself being created. And the people shaping it are thinking about you.
You have had quite an unusual career path for someone now leading one of London’s biggest regeneration projects. Where did it all begin?
I started out in the public sector, as a political assistant at Southwark Council. Within about a year and a half I got pulled into a complex project, working with the chief executive and the leader of the council. That project is basically what is now One Tower Bridge, home to the Bridge Theatre. At the time it was a derelict car park. That was my first real move into real estate and it set the tone for everything that followed.
What has always driven me is curiosity. I have never wanted to be pigeonholed. I worked on the Elephant and Castle regeneration, spent two and a half years in Kuala Lumpur on a mixed-use development on a scale comparable to Canary Wharf, and then around the time of the pandemic went back into the public sector as Director of Regeneration for Lambeth. That role really crystallised my thinking about how culture drives regeneration, sitting alongside institutions like the South Bank Centre, the BFI and the Old Vic in one of the most creatively diverse boroughs in the country. And then the opportunity at Earls Court came up.
Earl’s Court has an extraordinary history. How important is that to what you are trying to build?
It is fundamental. This was literally the place where the country came to see the world. The Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, the India Exhibition, the Ideal Home Show, the Motor Show. And then the music. Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust performance, which was apparently chaos because the sound was awful and it was the beginning of the end of Ziggy. Pink Floyd performed The Wall there eight or nine times, one of only three or four venues in the world where they did that. Freddie Mercury. Bob Dylan playing just down the road at the Troubadour which was his first gig in the UK.
The exhibition centres were demolished about eleven years ago now, and there are people who genuinely have no memory of what they were. So, part of what we are doing is creating new memories while honouring that legacy. That is why the meanwhile activity on site matters so much. Come Alive, our 700-seat circus spectacular, has sold 400,000 tickets. The Lost Estate has had five-star reviews across the press. These are not fillers. They are building a sense of place and a sense of anticipation.
What does the masterplan actually look like?
We will deliver around 4,000 homes, 12,000 jobs, a hub for climate innovation, three major cultural venues, retail and leisure, all set within 20 acres of public realm and green space. But for me personally, I hope this becomes part of a genuine cultural renaissance in West London.
A lot of attention has rightly gone to the east, to Stratford and the Olympic Park. But when you look at what is happening here, the Royal Albert Hall, the Lyric Hammersmith, Olympia, White City, Park Royal with its ten or twelve film studios, and our development sitting at the heart of it, there is a real opportunity to rebalance the conversation.
West London has a deep film legacy rooted in the BBC’s long history in White City. A huge amount of talent still lives here because of it. That is intrinsic to our masterplan.
You have been a judge at the Earls Court International Film Festival for three consecutive years. What has that experience been like?
It is a real privilege. The team’s quiet determination makes the festival feel quite special. Over a thousand people come together across the festival week, with over 400 at the Gala night at St Cuthbert’s, a Grade I listed church that actually overlooks our development site. The quality of the work is extraordinary and genuinely international, filmmakers from Southeast Asia, Iran, right through to local talent filming on locations in and around Earls Court and Kensington and Chelsea.
I hope the festival finds a permanent home within the development. We have plans for a cinema and I can very much see it being embedded in that. Culture and creativity in all its forms is central to what we are building, and the Film Festival is already part of the identity of this place.
You are joining a panel at SXSW London in June titled Creativity as an Engine for Growth. What does that phrase mean to you?
It means that culture is not the finishing touch you add once the hard decisions have been made. It is the foundation. Culture contributes £145 billion in additional GVA to the UK economy and £65 billion to London alone. One in six jobs in this city is in culture and the creative arts. That is not a soft argument. That is an economic one.
The panel will look at how creative ecosystems generate economic and social value, and what makes a district genuinely magnetic to people, ideas and investment, drawing directly on the lessons of Earls Court. I will also be moderating a workshop with the Come Alive team about how you take a show from an idea to a sellout in six months. Four hundred thousand tickets in eighteen months is not to be sniffed at.
Finally, what would you say to an emerging filmmaker or artist thinking about coming to London?
London is regularly ranked number one in the world for cultural experience. There are around 600 things to do on any given day, museums, galleries, theatre, live performance, and it is growing. The West End and Off West End are thriving in a way that Broadway, with its multi-million pound entry costs, simply cannot match. You can start a show here on a relatively modest budget and if it is good it will find its audience and grow. That pipeline is real.
And be curious. That is the one thing I would say above everything else. Do not pigeonhole yourself. Take the opportunities that feel unfamiliar. Work somewhere else if you get the chance. Have your preconceptions dismantled. That is where the real growth happens.
The United Film Podcast is hosted by Gregory Randolph Jr. and is dedicated to broadening and diversifying filmmaking culture in London and beyond, championing emerging filmmakers and supporters of the creative industries from around the world. This episode is available now on Spotify and YouTube.
