As a restless Shropshire teenager I was first drawn to Birmingham in the mid-90s by Oscillate’s legendary clubnights, and then moved here to work on the city’s Film and TV Festival. Their fast-fold screen gave me a taste for pop-up screenings, and when I left I took the screen with me. (It’s still here in the office. It’s a bit battered now.) I set up a regular Digbeth event in 2003 called 7 Inch Cinema, and out of this grew Flatpack and much more besides. As well as making things happen I also enjoy baking and writing, and have published pieces with Sight and Sound, Little White Lies and Electric Sheep.

Staying up late one night watching C4’s Shooting Gallery series, I came across the short film Music for Six Drummers and One Apartment. Unknowingly I became an exhibitor, showing the film to everyone I knew. Fifteen years on and with a little more understanding of curation and exhibition, I’m still showing films to people, as well as putting on all manner of mixed arts events as Flatpack’s programmer. Over the last decade I’ve also curated the moving image strand of what was the UK’s largest free arts festival Artsfest, and set up my own exhibition organisation KINO 10.

After studying film at university (with aspirations to be the next Sofia Coppola) I accidentally ended up managing a small college for two years, developing the arts provision in and around the Black Country, before making the transition to film when I joined mac Birmingham as Cinema Producer. As part of the arts team I managed mac’s independent cinema programme until spring 2016 after which I joined Flatpack Projects to head up Flatpack's year round activity under the banner of Film Hub Midlands, a BFI-funded project working with the Film Audience Network to help build a more thriving film community in the region.

Born and raised in Birmingham, I’m a curator, facilitator and art appreciator with a vested interest in the film scene of Brum. Post film degree, I came to be specifically interested in experimental, short, and documentary filmmaking with an emphasis on storytelling, heritage and the exploration of diasporic identity and social impact. After a year of working in the arts and heritage sector, I began working at Flatpack as part of the Independent Cinema Office’s FEDS scheme where I’ve had the opportunity to immerse myself in all things film exhibition.

After giving film production a go, I quickly realised that I much prefer (and am better at) sitting back and watching something that someone else has made. I didn't realise that there was any way of doing this professionally, until after numerous bar jobs and a philosophy degree I stumbled across a programming internship at Flatpack, and perhaps unwisely got my hopes very high very quickly. Luckily it panned out, and now I don't have to squeeze all my film watching in between shifts.