The People Behind ShAFF

Anna Paxton is a trail and ultra runner, climber, and writer from Sheffield. When she isn't running, climbing, or exploring outdoors she is most likely to be writing, reading, or watching films about adventure. Anna is the founder and editor of Outdoorista.co.uk, a website by and for women who love the outdoors. Anna works on Marketing and PR for ShAFF.

vo.tio developers

Ed Richardson, Jonathan Fletcher & Paul Stallard set up Beautiful Everything to offer experience consultancy. Happily for us, they are based in the Showroom Workstation - home to the Sheffield Adventure Film Festival. The team there have revamped the ShAFF YouTube channel. We are also proud to be piloting their new audience voting app. Ed is also a keen off-road runner and cyclist. He's recently completed the 42 mile High Peak Marathon with Matt Heason, though a small navigational error meant they made it into a 44 mile run! Jon is a big mountain biker, starting his competitive racing days in the same team that the legendary Steve Peat come from, BATS.

Judge and Presenter

Claire is Kendal Mountain Festival's Film Officer. Coming on board with ShAFF last year means she watches films all year round. She is a writer and poet (she apologises in advance), organises arty events for climbers in Sheffield and is an enthusiastic climber and runner. She studied digital film at the New York Film Academy before concluding its a very complicated way of getting your point across, so has huge respect for adventure filmmakers, and their ability to keep their kit dry. You can follow Claire on Twitter and Tumblr.

Festival Fringe Director

Dave is the Managing Editor of outdoors news website MyOutdoors.co.uk. He also coordinates the ShAFF photography exhibition which - with the support of Lowepro - has developed into the UK's biggest outdoor and adventure photography exhibition of the year. This year, he's created the Festival Fringe with a whole stack of free talks for the public and invitation only parties for our filmmakers, sponsors, athletes and volunteers. Oh, and he also runs the Second Hand Kit Sale.

Filmmaker & ShAFF trailer producer

Salt Street Productions, Filmmaker, judge and ShAFF Trailer Producer Young entrepreneur, Edward Birch set up his own production company - Salt-Street Productions - whilst at university and now works full time producing online sports videos. His career started at ShAFF when we showcased his first adventure sports documentary. He said: "Over the years I've lived in Sheffield I have seen ShAFF grow from strength to strength and I do my utmost to help continue this growth. ShAFF is a fantastic film festival, one of the biggest adventure sports festivals in worldwide. I feel very privileged to be a part of it." This year he's screening his latest big hit LOW LINE, other films and returns to produced our trailer.

Women in Adventure Judge

Hayley is Co-Director of Derbyshire Sport. Her particular remit is to help judge our new prize category - Best Women In Adventure Film - to encourage female talent both behind and in front of the camera. As a mother of three young girls she's passionate about inspiring women to be active and seek adventure. A keen runner and cyclist she's completed several long-distance events including triathlons and one of the world's toughest marathons, the Swiss MountainMan. Follow Hayley on Twitter @HayleyLever and follow Derbyshire Sport @DerbysSport

Working with Beautiful Everything

Ian White is working in collaboration with Ed Richardson at Beautiful Everything. Ian is one of those clever people who actually knows how to design an app. We can't wait to test run the new audience voting app at the festival. Like Ed and Matt, he's a keen runner and this pic is from the end of their epic High Peak Marathon. A man of many talents, he's also an excellent cook. You can find his open source work at http://github.com/ianwhite, and he tweets at @i2w

Showroom Box Office © Jake Thompson

If Martin is the engine that keeps ShAFF going, then JP is the anchor that stops Box Office imploding under the pressure of 3,000 visitors. He's the public face of the amazing Showroom Cinema team including all the technicians, marketing, catering and bar staff that make ShAFF weekend such an enjoyable experience. When it all gets too much, you can always rely on JP to come up with an anecdote that puts it all into perspective. PS You might not recognise him from this photo as he's grown a magnificent beard over the past year.

Volunteer Coordinator

It's no exaggeration to say that without Martin the festival would fall apart. Each year, as if by magic, a huge team of volunteers appears out of nowhere and helps us with everything from feedback forms to filming and ticketing to tech support. (Actually, there's no magic - just lots of hard work, months ahead recruiting, vetting, briefing and training people). Martin somehow manages to stay calm and cheerful, motivating a team of 50 with lots of caffeine and biscuits.

Festival Director

From around September Matt spends the long winter evenings watching the 350+ films that we consider for the festival each year including submissions from film makers as well as sourcing films. Before spending an agonising couple of weeks in December juggling the final selection of around 100 films into a programme in time for publication in the New Year. Once ShAFF's over, he's onto Sheffield's Cliffhanger Festival and programming Cycle To The Cinema's summer season and then Buxton Adventure Festival in the autumn. Originally a climber, he's branched out into ultra-running and cycling and helps organise the annual Grindleford Goat Sportive in September. Follow Matt @HeasonEvents.

Niall Grimes lives to climb, climbs to write and writes to live. He will talk for money, and raffles are a speciality. He once picked up Radio Luxembourg on a false teeth, which was where he first heard about Anna Friel's kiss on Brookside. He has climbed Mount Everest twice, once by a new route on the French side. He hopes you are having a nice day. He also publishes the brilliant Jam Crack podcast - a mix of interviews with climbers and climbing stories.

ShAFF Graphic Design Team, Design Everything

Paul and Hannah at Design Everything have come on board this year to give ShAFF brand new look to celebrate our 10th birthday. They've designed our new logo and custom font and done all the artwork for our posters, flyers, brochure, T-shirts and much more. We can't recommend their services too highly enough. Find out more... As if that weren't enough, their 10 year old son Elliot's film Run Funning is premiering at ShAFF and it has a soundtrack written and sung by their 8 year old daughter Tilly. If we had an award for Creative Family Of The Year, they'd win it.

Music Judge & ShAFF DJ

Bringing Sheffield producer and DJ Paul Hodgson (aka Grievous Angel) on board fulfils a long-time wish of Matt's to highlight the film soundtracks and all the musicians whose creative energy makes such a huge contribution to the success of a film. In addition to judging the soundtracks, Paul will be pulling together a #ShAFF2015 playlist of the best tunes that we'll be playing all weekend in the Showroom bar. Can't wait? Listen to his #ShAFF2015 Soundtracks playlist on YouTube. Follow Grievous Angel on Soundcloud and on Twitter @grievousangeluk.

Excel Consultant

It's not all glamour running a film festival. Though Festival Director Matt Heason and PR Lissa Cook love a good adventure film, what they love event more is a good excel spreadsheet. Pete Clayton is the Excel Consultant (or Excel Wizard as we call him). He has run general elections for emerging democracies from an excel spreadsheet and this year we're running ShAFF from his master programming spreadsheet. As well as being the cleverest person at ShAFF, he's also one of the nicest.