Open Cinema

FRANCHISE

Open Cinema has always been a franchise system of sorts. We enable communities to launch and sustain cinemas using our rigorously developed products and processes.

In 2014 the team was invited to attend the second European Social Franchising Network conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, where CEO Christoph made a presentation on the subject of 'distributed innovation'.

As a result, we were approached by numerous teams from across Europe with an interest in franchising Open Cinema in their country. In 2015-16 we were accepted onto the EU-funded Impact Hub Scaling Programme, which was delivered by the International Centre for Social Franchising - now Spring Impact. The programme helped us to develop a formal franchise framework, principally composed of an operating manual and a franchise agreement. 

In May 2018, our first country-level franchise launched in Finland: Open Cinema Finland. We are working with them to support the development of a national network of community cinemas in Finland - a locally owned and managed network of locally franchised and programmed community cinemas, reflecting and and developing Finnish community culture in all its unique glory. 

Further discussions are underway with teams in six European countries about country and region-level franchises. If you would like to discuss this with the team, please email info@opencinema.org to find out more.