sarah broughton
writer & artist
About Me
My
creative life began first as a devourer of my parent’s
bookshelves, then as an artist with a particular passion for
photography. After completing two years of a degree in
performance art, photography and video in Sheffield, I began to
create mixed media work occasionally exhibiting and selling
while I made my living in a variety of ways – as a life model,
window cleaner, photocopying assistant etc. I also began to
write, bit by bit - pieces of prose - most of it hopeless, but
fortunately fragmentary and therefore mercifully short.
I met a
stained glass artist, Lauren Sagar, and we formed Blast Design, named
after the ratty, filthy studio we shared in Blast Lane. We made bathroom
cabinets, window shutters and bespoke furniture and felt like artists.
I
moved to Cardiff and began making props for a television company. My
first job was a Welsh language drama set underwater and filmed in a
swimming pool. From that I progressed to being a ‘runner’ and then to
researching ideas for programmes. I also failed to learn Welsh and
renewed my love affair with photography. A couple of years in the
television industry convinced me that it was the last place I wanted to
work, so I became a painter and decorator and spent a delightful couple
of years listening to Radio 4 all day while I transformed people’s
houses. This came to an end when I was offered a job coming up with
ideas for the ‘Book at Bedtime’ slot on Radio 4 at the BBC in Cardiff.
After working as a
Specialist Researcher, I formed a company, Forget About It Film & TV,
with two friends – Suzanne Phillips, an award winning director and Val
Croft, a highly experienced producer. The company’s first production was
a four part BBC radio drama series,
It’s A Small World written by
me. The second commission was for a sixty minute documentary for BBC 4
to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Kathleen
Ferrier, An Ordinary Diva
(soon to be shown at the Bath Festival of Music as part of their Ferrier
celebrations this year). Commissions for documentaries on Gracie Fields,
Vera Lynn, Josephine Baker, Edith Piaf and Val Doonican followed. We
also made a number of other series and one-offs. My role in the company
was to come up with the ideas, research and script them. We also
developed feature films including one I had written, about the
Surrealist photographer Claude Cahun,
I’m in Training, Don’t Kiss Me. It was a brilliant job. We had an
office in Chapter Arts Centre and were part of a thriving community of
artists, film-makers and writers. Forget About It ran for six and a half
years – until the television world changed and there was no longer room
for a tiny company trying to make quirky, beautiful little films about
people who are either forgotten or miss-remembered.
I began to publish
articles – profiles mainly – about women writers and artists and the
business of writing for various publications:
New Welsh Review, Mslexia,
Western Mail and the Big Issue.
I also finished a part-time MA in Writing at Hallam University in
Sheffield. In 2008, Parthian
published my first novel, Other Useful Numbers, which has been very favourably reviewed, and
in 2009 an audio book read by Cerys Matthews was launched.
Since then I
have earned my living largely by working as a free-lance television
researcher (mainly for Griff Rhys Jones’ company, Modern Television) and
briefly by teaching unenthusiastic undergraduates in Cheltenham. I am
also completing an MPhil in Writing at the University of Glamorgan –
belatedly catching up on my rather patchy education.
And I’m writing my
second book....
