Alumna Dominique Unsworth is CEO and Producer at Resource Productions, a company she set up as a social enterprise in 1999 to create high-quality creative content for web and broadcast. She continues to lead the organisation with the mission of enabling social change through film to create award-winning and thought-provoking digital content and training, whilst diversifying the creative industries. Having received an MBE in the New Years Honours for services to Apprenticeships, we spoke to Dominique about her inspiration and the impact her work has had.
Working in media was an early aspiration for Dominique. “My childhood dream was to get onto the BBC graduate trainee programme and eventually produce historical factual entertainment programmes like the Time Team!” She began working in TV as a teenager, after securing work-experience at the BBC and continued to work as a runner, researcher and self-shooter whilst studying BA Classical Studies at Royal Holloway from 1996 to 1999.
Remembering her time at Royal Holloway fondly, Dominique says, “As a Classicist the architecture and romance of the campus definitely attracted me, but it was the brilliance of our lecturers, their creativity and enthusiasm that kept me inspired throughout. I was active in both the Classics and Debating societies as well as RAG week and the RAG mag.
“Meeting people from such different backgrounds, parts of the UK and wider world meant that Royal Holloway left me connected forever to an amazingly diverse and powerful network of life-long friends and supporters.”
After graduating in 1999, Dominique started a job at Slough Museum and began attending Slough Young People's Centre (SYPC). Working with volunteers at the Museum, youth workers, the Arts Development Officer at Slough Borough Council and fellow Royal Holloway alumnae Remona Aly and Hannah Mummery, the first Resource Productions project, Active Archive, was born.
“Active Archive was an intergenerational video oral history project, which enabled young people aged 16-25 at the youth centre and over 55s museum volunteers to share memories and technical and creative skills in storytelling and filmmaking. We secured a National Lottery Awards for All grant and never looked back!”
By setting up Resource Productions, Dominique wanted to “pass on film making skills to others, to use film as a tool for empowerment and social change - to enable a wider range of people from different backgrounds to get work in the mainstream media,” she says. Twenty years on, Resource Productions continues to go from strength to strength.
“It's been an amazing twenty years which we recently celebrated with our longstanding partners and supporters at Pinewood and Shepperton Studios, however I'm excited to enable even more change over the next two decades! I am motivated by the ongoing growth in our sector with Netflix and Disney both expanding their presence in the UK. They need more skilled craftspeople and technicians as well as production crew and we hope to see 100s of our alumni fill those roles.
“My hope is that by the time I retire, the Creative Industries will be more reflective of broader society and more people from marginalised backgrounds will see their stories shared on a mainstream platform.
“I recently attended the BAFTAs as a guest of one of the many amazing young people we have been lucky to support over the last 20 years. Local girl Myriam Raja (26) was nominated for 'Best Short Film' with her film Azaar. We began working with Myriam when she was just 14 - she knew no one who worked in the Media, had no connections or family links and now has her own agent and is very much 'in demand'!”
How does Dominique feel to be recognised in the 2020 New Year’s Honours? “It is of course a great privilege, but I am very much taking the honour on behalf of my own team of staff and volunteers, without whom I couldn't do ANYTHING!” she says. “Almost half of my team were or are Apprentices so to be recognised for services to Apprenticeships is something I am very proud of and want to continue championing. I was lucky enough to go to university thanks to a government grant and very small student loan, but these days the debt required to attend university can be daunting and so things like degree Apprenticeships, or the chance to test out a career path before committing to a 3-year degree are essential to increase perceived accessibility of HE and social mobility.”
Find out more about Resource Productions at resource-productions.co.uk.
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