Creageivity 21 - with Filmmaker Mary Dickinson

Filmmaker MARY DICKINSON has an astonishingly long filmography working as a Producer and Director, mainly for the BBC’s flagship Arts programme, ARENA. During her seven years of art school, culminating in an MA from the Royal College of Art, Mary rapidly abandoned her teenage dreams of becoming a painter. Instead she experimented with decaying food as sculptural statements, performance art, and developed an interest in human mortality and the rituals of death.

As Mary tells us in CREAGEIVITY 21, she realised that these preoccupations would not necessarily provide a steady income, and after the Royal College joined the film unit of the National Coal Board, working on educational and safety programmes. This led to a career defining 24-year spell with the BBC, working in Music and Arts, and Community Programmes. During this time she became attached to Arena, the highly influential and respected arts programme, steered from 1975 by Alan Yentob. Mary tells us of the first Arena programme she produced and directed, Old Kent Road, which defined her approach to having documentary subjects tell the story in their own words (now a common technique, but in the 80s a big break from presenter-led programmes).

We also hear of films made with comedian Alexei Sayle, comic strip artists Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and the story of Masters of the Canvas, about painter Peter Blake’s obsession with the masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki. These are just a few among very many entertaining and challenging films made by Mary while at ‘The Beeb.’

Following a period working in the Independent TV sector, Mary briefly retired, before having a ‘Eureka Moment’ on Catford railway station in London, and launching herself back into a new collaboration which will soon be submitted to film festivals and other public screenings.
Fasten your seatbelts folks and tune in to Creageivity 21 with MARY DICKINSON!

Music with thanks: Steampunk Victorian Orchestra by Humanoide Media

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!