News archive

BBC Studios Natural History Unit Announced As Headline Sponsor for Wildscreen Festival 2024

The broadcaster is lending its support to the world’s biggest wildlife film festival.

Wildscreen accredited as Living Wage Employer

Wildscreen is now accredited as a Living Wage Employer.

Official Selection 2024 – Meet The Programmers

Meet the diverse team of programmers reviewing our international selection at Wildscreen Festival this year.

Meet Kat – Our Comms & Admin Assistant!

1. Tell us a bit about your role!

So I’m the Communications and Administration Assistant at Wildscreen. Basically my main responsibilities are marketing and communicating what we do at wildscreen, I’ll do social media, graphic design, copy writing, newsletters and sort of the overall marketing strategy for the organisation. Basically any time we need to communicate anything to our audience, that’s where I step in.

2. How did you get to where you are today?

I studied Media Culture and Communications at the University of West England in Bristol. It was quite a broad degree, but that’s where I really got to exercise my love of writing. I got to do the more media side as well like photography, photoshop, all that fun technical side, but it was the theory I found most interesting. I found this job after I graduated through the Kickstarter program, a universal credit scheme. They run lots of really cool job opportunities you can only really access through being on universal credit and that’s how I found Wildscreen.

3. What motivates you?

So I think the main thing that really motivates me within this role is the team. We’re a really small team and I feel like we have a really strong work ethic so what motivates me is us all working together and having that positive vibe around the office. Especially since we work in events I think that sort of team energy is so important.

A picture of Kat wearing a green shirt, she is stood outside in the sunshine. Behind her is a stone wall.

4. If you could change one thing about the natural history industry, what would it be?

I think inclusivity is an obvious one. We need to make sure we’re opening up positions and roles to people of all demographics. I don’t want to say it’s been elitist in the past but it could definitely be more inclusive than it is at the moment. And luckily, we’re slowly starting to see that happen now.

5. What are your career goals?

I’d like to work in production, so a great thing about this role is that we get to do all these live events and work with great production crews. But thats definitely something I’m leaning more towards in the future, live events within television or theatre. 

6. Favourite moment working at Wildscreen?

My favourite moment is definitely at the Wildscreen Festival last year and it was the Panda Award ceremony. That was just a really exciting moment. We were nearing the end of the festival week and it was just a really nice memory after all the awards for us all to celebrate and kind of appreciate all the hard work we’d put in together. And yeah, it was just a really fun night where we could just enjoy ourselves and our hard work.

7. What’s your favourite story from nature?

There was this documentary about dolphins narrated by David Tennant and there was this really interesting behaviour that they’d picked up on with the dolphins where they were getting high off pufferfish. So the dolphins were squeezing the pufferfish which would release this endorphin when it puffed up and they were seemingly getting high off it and passing it around from one to another. But they wouldn’t hurt the pufferfish, which I really appreciated and then the pufferfish would kind of just, a bit traumatised, swim off at the end and he’d be okayish.

8. Describe working for Wildscreen in three words!

Funny. Empowering. Busy.

9. If you could turn into any animal for a day, what would you be?

Definitely an otter so I could just lay in a river with my pet rock and just float away with no worries, holding hands with my otter friends.

10. What’s a fun fact about you?

I like to do stick and poke tattooing for myself and for my friends.