Tucked away inside the University of Westminster is one of London’s most jaw-dropping hidden gems: Regent Street Cinema.
Originally a theatre, the venue can claim to be the birthplace of British cinema, thanks to a screening by the Lumière brothers way back in 1896. It’s undergone a lot of changes since then, but currently operates as an independent cinema with a considered, wide-ranging programme of new and classic movies.
I started running the social media for the cinema back in 2020, when everything was closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge here wasn’t just to create engaging content to keep the cinema on London cinemagoers’ radar while social gatherings were banned – it was also to create a whole new voice and identity for the cinema, which was undergoing a major rebrand at the time.
Over the past four years, I’ve produced regular content for all the cinema’s channels (originally Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, to which I’ve added LinkedIn and Letterboxd): everything from themed lists of films to watch to profiles of directors to keep an eye on to and even a spooky cinema-based ghost story.