Boiler Room, rooted in music and connected to art, fashion, film, and culture, had built a reputation for curating and creating top-tier music, documentaries, films, and events. To leverage this credibility, we aimed to evolve and delve into more narrative-driven stories within and beyond music through a new platform, taking our audience deeper into this world.

We sought to redefine the concept of a media brand and cultural institution, drawing on our legacy of real-life events and cultural influence. Through storytelling and curation, we also created new opportunities for brands to engage with our audience through culture, films, and art, both online and in real life.

• Create a modern cultural institution for young people

• Extend the Boiler Room world into a platform that drives culture in compelling ways, owning underground stories outside of music, ie. fashion, film, art and politics

• Leverage credibility within culture space through association with artists and influencers

• Create a platform with new engaged distribution channels to extend the size of the Boiler Room network

• Create new commercial opportunities giving brands opportunities to partake in curation and creation of

  compelling content and drive authenticity in their brand narratives.

• Through thematic and seasonal content, develop new partner categories across fashion, FMCG, travel and

  give brands 100% share of voice

• Position Boiler Room as a company that create a spectrum of credible narrative-driven content for culturally-minded young people

Our approach with 4:3 was to revolutionize cultural institutions for the modern age. We blended elements of a streaming service, publisher, and platform to deliver carefully curated content from the world’s most innovative voices.

We aimed to create a vibrant space where lost archives, Internet videos, documentaries, and cultural artifacts could come together. By celebrating both high and low culture, 4:3 seamlessly connected diverse content into a cohesive experience.

Rather than funneling audiences to a single destination, we chose to democratize access by integrating content into the platforms where people already consume media. Leveraging Boiler Room’s ecosystem and creating immersive real-life experiences, 4:3 made culture both accessible and tangible. Through our social channels, we engaged culturally-minded audiences with surprising and unexpected media, effectively redefining the traditional gallery and exhibition experience.

4:3 is a next-gen media brand, seamlessly integrated into the spaces where audiences consume content:

1. Websites

2. Social Channels

3. Boiler Room Ecosystem

4. Off-Platform Channels (other platforms, TV, cinemas, galleries, and beyond)

Unlike traditional media brands, we don’t drive people to a single destination. Instead, we bring compelling content directly to where people are already engaged. Our films and raw footage reach those interested in cultural outliers, delivering engrossing content they might not have actively sought out. We continually surprise the culturally curious.

As a cultural institution for the digital age, 4:3 avoids clickbait. We focus on showcasing valuable works through expert human curation, much like ‘Discover Weekly,’ but without the algorithms.

4:3 curated and created content across multiple touchpoints, celebrating identity, youth culture, performance, and the underground.

As a modern cultural institution, we collaborated with artists, musicians, and creators to present our work in thematic seasons. The platform featured guest curators from diverse fields like film, music, fashion, and art, helping to shape our collection of films. Our founding curators included:

• Elijah Wood: Hollywood actor

• Peaches: Queer icon

• Jenn Nkiru: Emerging director

• Ryuichi Sakamoto: Legendary Japanese film composer

In our digital and social spaces, we showcased a range of content, including limited releases, shorts, music videos, and raw footage.

4:3’s platform-agnostic approach redefined content distribution by avoiding traditional destination-based methods. Instead, we offered a unique spin on engagement, delivering everything from feature films to memes in innovative ways.

Our launch encapsulated the full spectrum of the 4:3 proposition. We assembled an ambitious collection of videos that reflected Internet and street culture while engaging with high art.

In true cultural institution fashion, we collaborated with our founding curators to select films and engaged a network of influential contributors—esteemed journalists, cultural commentators, and artists. These contributors curated playlists exploring diverse sub-cultures such as The Surveillance Machine, Vintage Grime, Avant-Garde Animation, and Queers Destroying Frontiers. Each video came with a mini-essay, showcasing our expertise in insightful editorial and purposeful curation.

Following this, we released the 4:3/Boiler Room three-part documentary series Fleshback, which chronicled the history of queer club culture in Manchester. This series underscored our commitment to producing original content created by our studio.

The launch week was further highlighted by the 4:3 exhibition, Swimming with Arthur Russell, in collaboration with the New York Public Library. This exhibition featured previously unseen pieces from personal archives, a sound installation by artist Andy Stott, a documentary screening, and a live broadcast from a church. This multifaceted experience completed the final piece of our strategy, as real-life events were integral to Boiler Room’s ethos.

Since the launch, 4:3 made waves at the Sheffield Doc Festival with an after-party for Hood By Air founder Leilah Weirauch’s film Shakedown. In late July, 4:3 took over Tate Lates with a YouTube lecture on ‘Visual Music’ by music academic Simon Reynolds. From August, we unveiled our new event format, 4:3 & Chill, an innovative hybrid of film screening, talk, and installation, featuring guests such as Mykki Blanco, Janelle Monáe, Elijah Wood, Flying Lotus, and MIA.

• 4:3 revolutionized the cultural landscape, surpassing our launch month projections by an astonishing 500%. The media buzz around 4:3 was electric, with coverage from top outlets like the Financial Times, Guardian, Campaign, The Drum, Creative Review, It’s Nice That, BBC 6 Radio, i-D, Hunger, and the Independent reaching over 99 million people.

  In its debut month:

  • Over 10 million video views: We shattered our target of 1.5 million views—an incredible 500% above expectations, driven by our dynamic social channels.

  • 17 million reach: Our Boiler Room and 4:3 social channels captivated audiences far beyond our initial goals.

  • 99 million reach in press coverage: The media's response was overwhelming, amplifying our impact on a massive scale.

  • 5,000 visitors: Our launch exhibition featuring Arthur Russell drew a substantial crowd, marking a strong start for the platform.

  4:3 didn't just make waves; it set a new standard for how underground culture can break into the mainstream.