Updates

All of us at markthree media are delighted to welcome Oli Lewington, who will join our team as Production Assistant. As well as doing his best to keep us organised (best of luck with that one) and ensuring that everything in the business runs as smoothly as possible, he’ll also be pitching in on the development process and generally being an asset across everything we do.

Oli has a great track record as a film maker and an editor, and is an all-round nice guy to boot. Which is nice. He also makes a mean cup of coffee. Joking aside, it works out as a pretty perfect fit on both sides, and we’re all really excited at having him on board.

Paul

Wow is all we can say to this. Monday night was the evening of the Cultural Diversity Network Awards held at the Royal Opera House. CDN is a fantastic initiative encouraging diversity in all its forms both in front and behind the camera, and we were lucky enough to be nominated for an award from them.

The evening was quite a swanky affair (I was able to justify buying myself a new dress for it!) and when we arrived we were on a table with Lisa Campbell from Broadcast Magazine, Roy Ackerman from Fresh One Productions and the lovely guys from Bwark Productions. There were also quite a selection of celebrities there, from the very funny Lenny Henry to Sir Trevor Philips – it was great to see a room filled with such diversity and talent.

The awards were hosted by the gorgeous Gok Wan, and had I known I was going to have to get up on a stage with him I think I would have chosen to wear a different pair of shoes… but never mind! Our award was in the second half of the evening and again, had I known I was going to be getting up on stage I may have also stopped my wine glass being topped up quite so frequently. The award we were up for was Special Mentoring Recognition. As a company who prides itself on inclusivity this means a great deal to us and we were incredibly chuffed to be called up as winners of the award. We are such a small company that our staff mean everything to us, and for one of our staff members, Paul Carter, to have nominated us for this really is something special.

When I first started in television, I was lucky enough to be mentored by the wonderful Kez Margrie who was the Series Producer of Blue Peter at the time. Being mentored by someone who understood the challenges and differences that a young person with a disability has was invaluable to my career and development and I will forever be grateful to her for everything she did for me. And now I feel honoured that I am in a position to try to do the same for others.

Diversity is something that we as a company want to champion and mentoring people and helping them into the industry is an important part of that. We want to say a huge thank you to Paul for nominating us, and to CDN for a wonderful evening (and for the very pretty award!)

-Kate