We are delighted to welcome our new cohort of creative practitioners working across immersive and interactive XR, gaming, journalism, podcasts, television and film.
Over the 9-month Training Fellowship, our fellows will develop skills in impact production and explore the potential for applying impact approaches to their respective discipline.
Each fellow brings a project that is already developed and ready for production or in production but not yet launched in the public domain, around which to build an impact plan.
The Fellows
Alison Ramsay
Alison is a Grierson award-winning documentary director and producer with an extensive track record making visually creative films for broadcast television. She began her career in current affairs before moving into narrative-driven documentary and factual drama. Her work focuses on provoking change with compelling stories. Her programmes consistently generate headlines, deliver strong audience figures and two have screened in Parliament. As Development Exec, she’s also helped win business with streamers including Netflix, CNNFilms and NBCUniversal.
Project: a feature documentary playing out at the intersection of science and the law, exploring the controversial diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
Find out more about Alison:
Awa Farah
Awa is a UK-based award-winning writer and producer. Producing credits include short film Somalinimo (2020) selected for Aesthetica Film Festival; Ridley Scott's A Life in a Day and BAFTA award-winning The Real Mo Farah. She is working on another Ridley Scott production for Netflix, set for release in 2024. Awa is also currently completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge. Her academic work has garnered several recognitions, including the prestigious Vice-Chancellor's Award.
Project: Exodus documentary film examining the intricate narratives of individuals looking to migrate from the UK. It follows the contemporary movement of young people who have chosen to return to their ancestral homelands.
Find out more about Awa:
Cressida Kocienski
I founded a production studio that crafts storytelling with integrity in support of visionaries and changemakers. With a background in Art Writing at Goldsmiths, and New Media at Liverpool John Moores (when New Media was still new), I left the art world because of pay and labour conditions, to become an industry-embedded storyteller. I particularly enjoy collaborating on spatial praxis and critical documentary. I am a deeply unserious serious person, chronically ill and neurodivergent, an unreformable scope creeper, and big fan of a sopping metaphor.
Project: Feral Business a AuDHD-led content platform that explores other ways of building and running small businesses, by seeing them as sites of agency and transformation within communities.
Find out more about Cressida:
Marion Atieno Osieyo
Marion is an environmental leader and founder of Black Earth Podcast. Her work and storytelling focus on the social dimensions of nature regeneration and how to foster intersectional, interspecies and culturally diverse solutions for nature. In 2023, Marion launched the award-winning Black Earth Podcast which celebrates nature and black women leaders in the environmental movement. The podcast has been recognised by outlets such as Spotify US, Guardian, and Resurgence.
Project: Just Transitions podcast series exploring key themes on the just transition, pioneering solutions by black women leaders, as well as public collaboration activities inspired by the series.
Find out more about Marion:
Mos Hannan
Mos is a director and editor with extensive digital media experience including commercials and social campaigns for brands like Fenwick and Google.
Passionate about amplifying marginalised voices, Mos aims to blend emotive storytelling with informative, journalistic approaches to highlight underrepresented narratives. His work aims to not only resonate emotionally with audiences but also inform and provoke thought through compelling, socially-driven content.
Project: After Eight documentary short on Satpal Ram wrongfully imprisoned for 24 years, revealing the global fight for his freedom and the lasting impact of racial injustice in Britain.
Find out more about Mos:
Produced Moon
Produced Moon is a creative XR theatre lab based in Glasgow, creating playful, unsettling and magical experiences with audiences at the centre. Their approach is collaborative, participatory and inclusive, experimenting, disrupting and playing with emerging technologies and innovative ideas around live performance. Their vision centres care and plurality.
Project: VR for Change a participatory project in which high school students around Scotland create 360degree music videos about the climate emergency. Focussing on activism, anti-racism, accountability and agency, the project immerses participants in climate justice movements, introducing 360degree films as a tool for advocacy and protest.
Find out more about Produced Moon:
Simon Wood
Simon is a Cape Town-based filmmaker whose work explores themes of history, capitalism and social justice. His recent VR film, Container, co-directed with Meghna Singh, confronts the intertwined legacies of slavery and capitalism within an ever-transforming shipping container. His Emmy-nominated film, Scenes from a Dry City, examines cracks in Cape Town’s complex social fabric during a drought. He is currently a fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab.
Project: The Four Floors of Faneuil Hall a quadriptych utilising projection mapping, immersive media installations and geo-tagging XR technologies, critically examining Boston's iconic Faneuil Hall, a symbol of liberty named after a transatlantic slave trader. A layered exploration of American identity, historical erasure and the ongoing struggle to reconcile the nation’s past with its present.
Find out more about Simon:
Zoe Lynch
Zoe is a content designer at Cranfield University and an independent multimedia consultant with expertise in digital learning development for higher education, specialising in animation and gamification. She works with creatives, developers and academics to deliver innovative learning solutions that bring ideas to life. She has consulted for the University of the South Pacific and has presented her work at several internationally renowned conferences.
Project: Exploring Sustainable Futures Game a role-playing digital game designed to engage participants in systems thinking and strategic decision-making. Players from different sectors assume roles and must respond to changes in the environment, the economy, technology, and society to create a more sustainable future.
Find out more about Zoe: