Dr Susi Arnott
Semi-retired film-maker with a background in laboratory research. Art-science projects for galleries in recent years led to re-engagement with biology, this time in the natural world.
2023-5: Principal Investigator, ‘Slimewatch2: this time it’s Deptford’; community science in collaboration with Creekside Discovery Centre, funded by the British Phycological Society. Writing and publising 4 editions of a handbook on Climate Literacy & Numeracy
2018-19: photographer/film-maker of ‘Slimewatch’, art-science collaboration between Life Sciences and Film/Photography at University of Westminster
2018 to date: Carbon Literacy training (originally for BAFTA albert, then 3 accredited courses of my own, via Walking Pictures). Now also Biodiversity Collage workshops
2007 to date: gallery & exhibition work has included screenings at Museum of London, Bridport Arts Centre, Photofusion, Brunel Sinking Shaft, The Cinema Museum, Regent Street Gallery Café, Bargehouse (South Bank), Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), UCL’s Science Library and Cheltenham Science Festival
2003 to 2025: director of Walking Pictures Ltd. (No longer a limited company)
1986 to 2020: freelance camerawoman, editor and series producer/director, with broadcast credits on Channels 4, Five, BBC2 and BBC World. Non-broadcast clients include the NHS, Oxfam, Christian Aid, British Council, Farm Africa, SOS Sahel, Gurkha Welfare Trust, Wellcome, the UN’s FAO, and governments of Papua New Guinea and Kenya
Experience as a trainer/lecturer in film-making includes production-based, hands-on training for SOS Sahel, Cape Farewell, Oxfam, CAFOD, UNHCR, IIED and DFID (now merged into FCDO) in Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Rwanda, Guyana, Ghana and Greenland. Academic teaching has included documentary film-making at City Lit (adult education) and University of Westminster; MA Television for Development at University of Reading, BA film at LCC (UAL), and visiting lectureships at Universities of Birmingham, Sussex and Manchester
Clients as a researcher/writer/editor include UK’s Health&Safety Executive, the EU (in Philippines), Oxfam/Heinemann, the International Broadcasting Trust and the BBC’s World Service Trust (now ‘Media Action’) in Bangladesh
EDUCATION, TRAINING & ACADEMIC RECORD:
2016-2019: Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Sussex
2017: City&Guilds Award in Education & Training, City Lit (London)
2016: HEFAT (Hostile Envt.&First Aid Training)
2008-2011: Honorary Research Fellow in Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester
1996: PRA training with Scottish Participatory Initiatives
1990: graduation from National Film & Television School (documentary & camera)
1983: PhD, UCL (control of gene expression in plant tissue culture), SRC funded
1979: Industry-funded laboratory research, beginning PhD work at University of Minnesota
1978: BSc (Hons) Biological Sciences, University of Nottingham, UK
UK passport; working French and Melanesian tok pisin
Married, no children