Appointments At Screen Yorkshire Set To Drive Film Industry Forward

Screen Yorkshire, the Regional Screen Agency for Yorkshire and Humber welcomes new staff members to drive forward an ambitious £14m plan to develop the region’s film, broadcast and interactive media industry.
New appointments at senior level include Neil Preston as Finance Director, Tony Parker as Head of Industry Development and Andrew Craske as Head of Communications. Joan Whale also takes up the new role of Project Monitoring Manager.
Screen Yorkshire’s new Chief Executive Sally Joynson welcomed the news: “These new appointments will help us respond to the changing nature and needs of the industry. I feel confident that we have appointed a strong team that brings the right skill set and ideas to take forward our future vision for the region. We are now looking forward to working with businesses across the region to build Yorkshire’s distinctive reputation as a thriving dynamic centre for film, broadcast and new media industries.”
Tony Parker joins Screen Yorkshire as Head of Industry Development. He will lead the agency’s new push on business development and support programmes. He will work closely with national and regional industry, with broadcasters, developers and commissioners to build new opportunities and develop business growth. Parker joins Screen Yorkshire from the BBC where he has spent the last three years as Editor of TV Development for BBC English Regions and was responsible for commissioning a broad range of programmes from news, current affairs to natural history. Parker has a strong track record in devising creative projects and programmes. He heads up the development team including Kim Heeramun (Industry Development Co-ordinator), Nicola Bowen (Company Training Manager) and Craig Albeck, (Game Republic Project Manager).
Neil Preston joins the organisation as Finance Director. He brings to the organisation the experience of working for leading commercial companies based in the region and will be working alongside the Chief Executive to develop Screen Yorkshire’s long term future plan and financial management.
Andrew Craske joins Screen Yorkshire as the Head of Communications to devise and launch a new marketing and communications campaign to raise the profile of the Yorkshire region within the national media industry.
Craske has been based in London for the past six years as the Communications Manager for Skillset, the national Sector Skills Council for the a-v industries. He is looking forward to returning to his native Yorkshire
Joan Whale takes on the new role of Project Monitoring Manager, she will work closely with the internal team and with Screen Yorkshire’s clients to collect, monitor and evaluate the impact of the work and report to funders on progress.
All staff are based at Screen Yorkshire’s office in Leeds.
(DS/SP)