op art ceramics with embroidered walls

Kitchenware drawing on 1960s style op art and new approaches to wallpaper design are among the new products offered by Yoyo Ceramics and on view during its OPEN STUDIO showcase at Cockpit Arts in Holborn this weekend. The enterprising ceramicist Helen Johannessen, who was behind the successful Is That Plastic? hard take on Tupperware five years ago, has just launched a Blimey O Riley bone china tea and toast set and she has begun to collaborate with wallpaper embroiderer Claire Coles on innovative wall surfaces and lighting.

EIS: a new dynamic in film funding

Film clients of the Innovatory are reporting rising levels of anxiety about the funding of independent movies amid the current gaiety at Cannes. Lots of projects have been frozen despite a boom in the market for for British films and rising cinema revenues. Pre-sales deals and gap funding are proving harder to find for mid range and budget movies, broadcaster budgets are plummeting, and the UK Film Council has too little funding at its disposal to make much of a difference to most producers.

"There may be one silver lining to the cloud hanging over the sector," says director of investment Kevin Davey. "The government's recent raising of tax levels for the better off makes Enterprise Incentive Schemes - arrangements which reduce the tax burdens and liabilities of people making private equity investments - much more attractive. Many film companies have already set up EIS schemes as a way of attracting funds, retaining more control over their work, and holding onto bigger shares of their rights and profits."

Clubbed, by Formosa Films, is a good example of this increasingly common approach to fundraising. The film finance house Matador has recently closed an EIS fund for investors, but it is a very active player in the sector, having set up a total of five funds in the last eighteen months, and it is likely to open another shortly. "Setting up your own EIS is very expensive and time consuming," says Davey. "It can cost anything rom £10,000 to £40,000 in accountancy fees to administer the fund, along with months of campaigning to win over investors. But it's a new way of working that more of us will have to get used to."