The Locarno Film Festival has joined France's CNC, the UK's British Council, bfm International Film Festival, Screen East and Germany's Goethe Institut among the initial partners for a new European film development initiative, Babylon. Fiona Howe and Gareth Jones of the UK production house Scenario Films and Thierry Lenouvel of France's Cine-Sud Promotion unveiled the initative in Locarno this weekend.

Babylon is intended as a pan-European forum "in which minority filmmakers can speak to each other and to the widest international audience, providing access and inclusion" with the provision of such activities as screenplay development workshops, training initiatives, conferences and film festival events.

"Through a discovery of shared experience Babylon celebrates Europe's cultural diversity, a motor for European integration, an affirmation of solidarity between filmmakers across the continent," the founders said.

Following Locarno, the initiative will also be presented at London's bfm International Film Festival in September when a Europe-wide call for projects will be launched. The names of the successful candidates for a project development workshop would then be announced at the Amiens Film Festival in November.

According to Gareth Jones, the new venture is looking to win the support of the Berlin Film Festival for the staging of its first full-scale event during the festival next February. This event would include a three-day project development workshop for the selected projects; a networking/pitching forum to introduce the films of cultural minorities to potential producers, co-producers, and distributors; and a one-day conference on the state of European cultural inclusion in the film world, open to all participants at the Berlinale and others by invitation or application.

The programme would subsequently offer a follow-up session for the workshop candidates and onward mentoring by experienced figures within the minority film community.

Citing the emergence of Fatih Akin in Germany, Karim Dridi in France and Gurinder Chadha in the UK as new minorities arriving in the mainstream, the progamme's architects concluded that "the aim of Babylon is to bring the richness of our cultural experience to all, to open up the wealth of individual experience to the majority who otherwise are left with little idea of their neighbours. Only in the context of their shared European identity do our minorities have a common experience to communicate, and that shared European identity involves us all."