On Tuesday 15 September, Lake District Film Studios opens its doors properly for the first time. It is a separate business with its own name and its own website, but it is our room, and that is the part that matters if you work with us.
We have spent twenty years making things in other people’s spaces. A hired studio two hours down the motorway. A conference centre with the chairs pushed back. A meeting room, a borrowed table and a lot of apologising about the air conditioning. It works. It has worked for two decades. It also quietly sets a ceiling on what a client can commit to, and we have felt that ceiling more every year.
A series stops being a logistics exercise
The hardest part of a video podcast has never been the recording. It is the six weeks before it, finding a room, booking the room, dressing the room, striking it at the end of the day and doing the whole thing again next month. Every episode carries that overhead, and it is why so many series announce twelve episodes and quietly stop at four.
A permanent set removes it. The lighting is already rigged. The cameras are already positioned. The set is already dressed and it looks the same in episode nine as it did in episode one, which matters more than people expect. Booking a recurring slot in a room we own is a diary entry, not a negotiation. That is the difference between a series you hope to keep up and one you actually finish.
The arithmetic changes
When a production company rents a space, the client pays for the space twice: once at the venue’s rate and once at the markup. We are not doing that any more. The money that used to go on hire goes into the things that show up on screen, which in practice means more cameras, more edit time and more clips out of the same day.
Live streaming gets a base, and keeps the road
Most of our live work happens where the event is, and that does not change. Conferences, launches, awards and AGMs are still going to be wherever you are holding them, and we will still be there with the kit.
What changes is everything around it. Pre-records, remote contributors, rehearsals, presenter pieces to camera, the studio segments that top and tail a live show. All of that now has somewhere to happen that is not a hotel function room booked by the hour.
Our own shows get somewhere to live
Cinderella Live, Sound Check, Film Live and SantaLive.tv are ours. Formats we developed, made and put out, on and off, for years, fitted around paid work and available rooms.
A studio that is not booked is a studio that is free, and free time is where formats get developed. We expect the slate to move faster now, and everything we learn making our own shows ends up in the ones we make for clients. That has always been the arrangement, it has just been slower than we wanted.
It makes live shopping possible at all
We have been exploring live selling on TikTok Shop, and it is the clearest example of something that simply cannot be done from a hired room. It needs a permanent set that is lit and dressed and stays that way. It needs a slot at the same time every week so an audience learns when to turn up. And it needs to look like television rather than a video call, because a stream that looks like a broadcast sells differently to one that does not.
None of that is compatible with packing down at six o’clock because someone else has the room at seven. It is compatible with a studio you own.
And Cumbria gets a production base
This is the part that is bigger than us. Cumbria is arguably the one place in the UK without a film industry, while the Lake District pulls production in constantly with nowhere to base it. Crews travel in, spend their budget somewhere else and travel out again.
Two properly equipped studios fifteen minutes from Carlisle changes that arithmetic. It also means we can crew up from experienced local people rather than driving a team up from three hours away, which is better for the work and better for the region.
Come and see it
The launch is on Tuesday 15 September from 5:30pm, in partnership with Tech District Cumbria, who are launching their new podcast that evening, recorded at the studio.
It opens with a panel on the creative sector in Cumbria, with people actually working in the industry here talking about where the region is heading and what becomes possible now there is somewhere to base a production. Then the talks stop: networking, tours of both studios, the green room and the production office, and food and drink on us.
- When: Tuesday 15 September 2026, from 5:30pm
- Where: The Clocktower, Crofton Hall, Thursby, Carlisle, CA5 6QB
- Cost: Free entry, all welcome
- Parking: Free, on site, right outside
Whether you shoot, produce, crew, edit, or just want to see what is now on your doorstep, come along.
Lake District Film Studios is a NEXI Media facility. You can see the spaces, the kit and the rates at lakedistrictfilmstudios.com, or talk to us about making something in it.