麻豆约拍

Cornish Voices was a one-year screenwriting group created and run by 麻豆约拍 Writersroom, in partnership with .

In 2021 we were lucky enough to work with some of Cornwall’s most exciting and promising writers. Cornwall is much more than a stunning holiday destination: it’s an area of huge socio-economic deprivation – something that visitors rarely see. It is also a Celtic nation with a unique culture and heritage, which is rarely represented on screen in a contemporary context.

The aim of Cornish Voices was to bring through the voices of that culture and develop stories of contemporary Cornwall. At the same time, we provided training in craft skills, supported the development of TV and Radio/podcast ideas, demystified the business, set up networking events and introduced those writers to the wide range of opportunities offered in the broadcast industry.

These emerging writers have all had a year of development and support from 麻豆约拍 Writersroom, focusing on writing for all aspects of the industry as well developing their spec scripts through from treatment with professional script editing support.

Find out more about the sixteen Cornish Voices below.

If you would like to read any of the spec scripts or receive more information about our Cornish Voices Alumni, please email writersroom@bbc.co.uk. 

A word from Screen Cornwall

A proud Celtic nation, Cornwall has a long tradition of storytelling across many creative forms inspired by a unique heritage and diverse contemporary culture. Screen Cornwall is a champion of Cornish talent, from our work with 麻豆约拍 New Creatives and BFI Network, right through to feature films such as BAIT, and we’re also on the ground to help production companies looking to shoot in the region. If any of these fantastic writers get you excited about the idea of working here, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via laura@screencornwall.com or the Screen Cornwall team on 07852 989964.

Lara Barbier is currently writing a dark fantasy feature film, The Ash Under the Mountain, for Standoff Pictures with development funding from Ffilm Cymru. She is also developing an original TV series with Red Planet Pictures and a historical TV series with FB Films. She is also currently writing for Team Artichoke's latest game in development. Her debut drama for 麻豆约拍 Radio 3 M is for Mussels, was broadcast earlier this year.

Last year she was part of 麻豆约拍 Writersroom Cornish Voices 20/21, a screenwriting development programme offering mentoring, opportunities and networking. Lara's original TV series The Pirate Wife was selected for the Celtic Screen Talent Showcase at Edinburgh International Film Festival, which aims to discover high-quality unproduced TV projects from the Celtic nations and match them with leading companies in the international industry. She also co-wrote a YA TV Movie Silver Moonlight with Emily Rhodes for German producer Bavaria Fiction and a global streaming platform.

In 2020 she completed a 6-month residency with the CanneSeries Institute, mentored by Canal+/Vivendi and SerialEyes, where she developed an original series, Sparrowhawk, a YA Spy thriller, which was chosen from amongst the residents as the winning project by Studio Canal.

Lara is represented by Emily Smith, The Agency.

Anna Mansell is the author of six novels published by Bookouture (Hachette), three of which spent time in the Amazon Top 100 in the UK, Australia and Canada.

Since completing the 麻豆约拍 Writersroom Cornish Voices programme, in which she developed a pilot episode for her comedy drama, LIFE BEGINS AT… Anna has taken part in a writers room for the development of a new comedy drama; has a feature film in development with a producer; has been commissioned to write a site-specific, 1980s styled adaptation of THE TEMPEST for performance in Cornwall in September 2022; has written a number of short, monologue pieces for festivals and events; was a writer on the collaborative short film, BEHIND THE POSTCARD; and was recently awarded funding from Arts Council England to develop a one woman show, IS THIS IT? Her seventh novel, HOW TO BREATHE SO YOU DON’T LOOK FAT (a complement to her podcast of the same name) will soon be out on submission.

Anna was inspired to start screenwriting by her dad, who is a magician. And all the therapy she had because of her dad being a magician. She is now developing a script heavily inspired by his shop, MAGICK and dreams of the day she can say she is one of the writers on THE ARCHERS.

She writes comedy drama/drama and lives between Cornwall, the Peak District and Yorkshire.

Marie Macneill trained as an actor at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama. She was Artistic Director of the theatre company Bedside Manners, writing, directing and producing many touring shows. In an early writers’ room Marie worked on the drama series The Tribe, writing 11 x 30’ episodes for Cloud 9/Channel 5, and Revelations – Ep: David and Mr G (also Cloud 9/Channel 5). A variety of film and original drama series commissions followed including 麻豆约拍, 麻豆约拍 Wales, S4C, Festival Films and Celandine. Recent short films include Katbottys (writer and producer – Short Film nomination, Celtic Media Festival, 2019); Kestav (script editor for Christopher Morris, Flym K, Screen Cornwall, 2021 - winner Short Drama at Celtic Media Festival 2022; The Day of the Coyote (producer, dir: Derek Hayes, ACME, 2020 – Award Winner - The Laugh or Die Comedy Fest); To Whom It May Concern (writer for filmmaker Orson Cornick – currently in post-production, summer 2022). In September 2020 Marie was chosen for the 麻豆约拍’s Writersroom – Cornish Voices, where she developed a 6 x 60’ drama series – End of the Line.

Earlier in 2020 Marie wrote and directed the theatre play, The Coastguard (Mundic Nation) which toured until lockdown put a stop to it. In July 2022 Marie directed a scratch performance of her new play SUNDAY LUNCH, in association with Scary Little Girls, Hall for Cornwall, IntoBodmin and the Mayven Festival.

Simon Harvey is a writer, director and producer based in Truro, Cornwall. He is the Artistic Director of o-region and Associate Artist at Hall for Cornwall and was a long-time collaborator with Cornwall’s renowned Kneehigh Theatre. He has toured extensively across the UK and Internationally (Ireland, USA and Australia) and worked in the West End. He has produced four feature films ‘The Midnight Drives by Mark Jenkin, Weekend Retreat and Brown Willy by Brett Harvey. The most recent feature length collaboration with Brett Harvey, LONG WAY BACK a is due for general release in 2022.

He has a wide experience of writing for theatre including Marthusow ha Mysteris (for Hall for Cornwall) FUP (adapted from the novel by Jim Dodge) for Kneehigh Theatre, The Canterbury Tales (with Dave Mynne), The Illustrated Girl (with Anna Maria Murphy and Carl Grose) and the Christmas shows Jack and the Beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella (for Hall for Cornwall) and A Cornish Carol (Palores Productions) with Richard Healey.

For Screen, Simon has written the original short film ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Back’. and was recently a writer and script editor for the collaborative short film ‘Behind the Postcard’ by Screen Cornwall.

Simon is currently developing a new show WHITE HORSE an adaptation of the novel The White Horse of Zennor and other Stories by Michael Morpurgo which will tour nationally in 2022 / 23.

Jake Mackintosh is an emerging writer based in Falmouth, Cornwall who writes across TV, features and shorts with a particular focus on dark comedies. In addition to being selected for Cornish Voices by the 麻豆约拍, he is a semi-finalist of Austin Film Festival’s screenplay competition, Edinburgh International Film Festival Talent Lab alumnus and BFI Network x BAFTA crew member for the final two cohorts of the programme in 2019/20 and 2020/21.

Give You Up is a time travel dark comedy series, which Jake developed with 麻豆约拍 Writersroom as part of the 麻豆约拍 Cornish Voices. It is a love letter to Back To The Future which follows Tracy Rodda as she escapes her Cornish foster home and travels back to 1988 to put her birth parents on a track away from petty crime, drugs and alcohol abuse.

Jake’s current black comedy short Dog Years is funded by the BFI Network and Sound/Image Cinema Lab and is currently at festivals having screened at several including Cornwall Film Festival, Paris International Film Festival and Manchester Film Festival. His most recent microshort Foresight, made with a team of BAFTA Crew members, was a winner at Berlin Flash Film Festival, runner up at Raindance and has so far been selected for Dead Northern and Norwich Film Festivals. He is currently developing new TV projects and is hard at work on his next short comedy.

Yazmin Joy Vigus is an emerging writer and director based between Cornwall and London. In 2017, she was selected for the Widening the Lens talent scheme run by Encounters Film Festival, where she received mentoring for the development of her short film script MERMAIDS.

From 2018-2019, she worked as a Director's Assistant on the third season of THE CROWN (Netflix). In 2019, she joined the writers' room for the development of BFI-backed show ALIEN8ED, led by Simon J. Ashford (麻豆约拍's THE MUSKETEERS) and Executive Producer Phillippa Giles (麻豆约拍’s LUTHER).

Yazmin’s debut short film MERMAIDS, which she wrote and directed, was backed by BFI Network South West. The script was based on her personal experiences of returning home to Cornwall from London in the wake of her own quarter-life-crisis. The project garnered support from several BAFTA and Emmy nominated industry professionals, who worked with Yazmin to make the film, including Post Production Supervisor Reece Ewing (THE CROWN), Ian Wilson (THE TWO POPES) and BAFTA winning Exec Producer Emily Morgan (SUPERNOVA). MERMAIDS was completed in 2021 and is currently beginning its festival run.

Yaz was thrilled to be a part of the 麻豆约拍 Writersroom Cornish Voices 2020/21. She is currently developing projects for film and television.

Miles Sloman is a Cornish writer, producer & actor who is currently working with BAFTA and Emmy award-winning Producer, Phillippa Giles on his original project ‘At Risk' with actress Nicola Walker attached to play the lead. The series is in development with The 麻豆约拍 with Helen Black as lead writer.

Recently, Miles' production company Kellan Productions was awarded funding through The BFI’s Young Audiences Content Fund for two original projects, which saw him run writers' rooms for both before completing script & show bible commissions.

Miles was selected for the inaugural group of The 麻豆约拍 Writersroom Cornish Voices and was selected from the 麻豆约拍 Writersroom groups to be commissioned for 麻豆约拍 Radio 3’s The Verb. His drama Fisherman’s Elegy, featuring Edward Rowe (Bait) was broadcast in July 2021.

He is currently working on a short film with Ben Pearce at Revolution Films and last year, was selected as part of The BFI NETWORK@LFF 2021 as well as BAFTA x BFI Network Crew 2021.

In 2019, he was commissioned as a 麻豆约拍 New Creative on his short film Anoraks which he produced and co-wrote. Anoraks was released on iPlayer in 2020 and has been selected for LOCO Festival 2021 at The BFI. The series has received development funding through Screen Cornwall. He also took part in the writers' room for Alien8ed by Simon J Ashford in 2019.

In March last year, he co-produced RESET THE STAGE for The Mono Box. Having originated the project, the programme saw 7 ethnically diverse writers create monologues for 7 leading theatres which we filmed in lockdown. The project includes actors Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Thalissa Teixeira, Danny Kirrane and partner theatres such as The Donmar, Young Vic, Almeida & Bush theatres.

Sara-lee McCall spent 52 years in Cornwall until 2021 when she moved to Rutland. For the 25 years she taught English and Italian in secondary schools, she also wrote her own stories, poems and mini dramas.

At her 50th birthday dinner she was persuaded to do a Master’s Degree at Falmouth University where she specialised in script writing. She was delighted to be accepted into the 2020/21 Cornish Voices Group. Her first publication is a poem, ‘Maggots’.

Thematically, it is the struggle of naïve young people in the adult world that interests her. This year, she has written a TV drama pilot, The Yard, about an ambitious, young Cornish girl who gets involved in the sinister side of horse racing.

Sara-lee’s first script, Seventeen, is the tragedy of a studious young man who unwittingly commits a sex offence by storing photos of his girlfriend, 17, on his phone. She is now writing a more light-hearted tale about a group of 50+ river dwellers.

Alex MJ Smith is a screenwriter, comedy writer and nerd who lives in beautiful Falmouth (but mostly stays indoors, writing).

By day, he writes jokes for brands. By the rest of the day, he has worked in two writers’ rooms, written a kids’ play for Cornwall’s Minack Theatre, has been hired to rewrite a pre-school animated pilot, and has his own projects in development across live action and animation. He’s also written topical comedy for 麻豆约拍 shows including a forthcoming Radio 4 sketch show and, oddly, the News at 10.

His first drama pilot, HIGH WATER, is a deeply personal project — a dark fantasy that explores the impacts of parental suicide, a fraught fraternal relationship, and the question of where we go when we die.

Alex is currently developing new TV drama ideas — including a Bristol-set supernatural thriller, inspired by the year he lost 16 pints of blood.

Tom Kerevan began his writing career as a playwright at university, before finding his home writing for the screen. In 2012 he moved into producing and the following year he founded Cannibal Films with Alex Lightman and Ern Herrmann. He wrote and produced their debut feature TEAR ME APART which world premiered in competition at the Austin Film Festival 2015.

In 2018 he wrote two series for Blackpills - IMMORTALITY (released 2018) and OFF. Since then he has divided his time between writing TV pilots, working on interactive films, and expanding Cannibal Films’ slate with a focus on personal and surprising true stories.

He works across all genres and aside from true stories, he finds himself drawn to crime thrillers, sports biopics, as well as dramas with characters searching for a place to belong.

He lived in London for 12 years but can now be found writing from the north coast of Cornwall.

He is represented by Steven Russell at Collective Talent.

Callum Mitchell is a writer and filmmaker from West Cornwall.

Since 2010, Callum has produced work for organisations across the UK and beyond. This includes writing extensively for the stage, curating art exhibitions, directing films and creating landscape art installations.

He is an Associate Artist at Hall For Cornwall and was Assistant Director on Mark Jenkin’s BAFTA-winning film Bait (Early Day Films/BFI), as well as the forthcoming Enys Men (Bosena/Film 4). He fulfilled the same role for the Jenkin’s collaboration with The Smile - the new musical venture from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood - on Skrting On The Surface video. In 2020 he was awarded the Nick Darke Talent Award for his stage-play, Storm.

Callum’s debut radio drama, Solomon Browne, written to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Penlee Lifeboat disaster, was broadcast on 麻豆约拍 Radio 4, December 2021, and selected as Drama Of The Week. He is currently developing The Cliff - a 3-part audio drama with the station, as well as a four-part drama series for television entitled The Holiday Park. His first feature film - The Art Of Mackling - will be produced by Studio Erma and Bosena, directed by Jonny Dry. Callum is represented by Louise Bedford at Lou Coulson Associates

Henry Darke is a Screen International 'Star of Tomorrow'. His award winning short film Big Mouth played at the BFI London Film Festival, Encounters, and was Bafta shortlisted. He directed Coming Up episode Hooked for Channel 4. His first play Booby’s Bay was nominated for the Off West End awards (Offies), and Longline, his first drama for Radio 4, was pick of the week.

Henry was chosen for the national talent initiative 麻豆约拍 Writersroom Drama Room 2017 before being selected for Cornish Voices. Henry has developed CHIPPY, a pilot for a 6 x 30-minute, mystery-comedy-thriller, set in and around a chip-shop in Padstow, where Henry is from. Our hero is gay chip-shop worker Bob, who in the absence of police support, sets out to find a missing Polish school-girl, with the help of his three friends. Chippy is about what it means to feel like an outsider in a small town.

After graduating from Sheffield University with a BA in English Literature, Rebecca Mordan spent 3 years at Bristol Old Vic. She worked as an actor in film, theatre and television, and then founded award-winning production hub Scary Little Girls, to create roles and opportunities for women and populate stories with diverse female characters.

With SLG Rebecca has written, directed, produced and performed while working with a wide range of partners including the BFI, Glastonbury Festival and Hall for Cornwall (for whom she is an Associate Artist). She recently co-wrote and presented The Greenham Effect for the 麻豆约拍's Archive on Four, drawing on the 200 plus testimonials she helped gather from Greenham Women as part of the Greenham Women Everywhere project she co-founded. 2021 also saw the publication of her first book, Out of the Darkness: Greenham Voices drawing on these interviews.

Her first piece of fiction for radio was featured in The UK Project, in which she was asked to represent the Cornish voice, out this year. She is a founder member of KerPow, Cornish female artists tackling sex and gender discrimination and has been a campaigner against male violence for over 25 years. Thanks to this she is often a ‘rent-a-feminist’ guest for 麻豆约拍 Radio, including You and Yours, 5 Live and Women’s Hour, and Sky News.

Brett Harvey is a writer & director based in Cornwall. His debut feature film Weekend Retreat won multiple awards including Best Director at the London Independent Film Festival and his second feature Brown Willy (described by The New Statesman as “Cornwall’s answer to Withnail and I”) won the Golden Chough at the Cornwall Film Festival. His third feature Long Way Back will be released in cinemas 2nd September.

He’s made various award winning shorts, music videos and promos including HAND a short film documenting his diagnosis with young onset Parkinson’s disease. He’s a member of 麻豆约拍 Writersroom Cornish Voices and is currently developing his next feature film Full Stops Not Tadpoles with support from Screen Cornwall and Cultivator.

Alys Metcalf is a member of 20/21 麻豆约拍 Cornish Voices group and the 2018 麻豆约拍 Comedy Room. Alys is currently working with TV company Bad Wolf on her new comedy-drama. Her sitcom, The 麻豆约拍, was optioned by Hartswood Films and she has developed another sitcom and two shorts with Sharon Horgan’s company, Merman. She recently wrote the comedy Beginner’s Guide to Line of Duty, voiced by Diane Morgan for 麻豆约拍 platforms. Her interactive story, The Act, was commissioned by 麻豆约拍 Taster. Her short film, Remnants, was screened at The Hackney Empire as part of the London Short Film Festival and won the main award for Best Film and Best Writing in the International 100 Hour Film Racing competition. Alys has also been part of the writers’ room for 麻豆约拍 Radio Wales’s topical comedy show, The Leak.

As a playwright, Alys' play Leopards opened the new Artistic Director's season at Rose Theatre in September 2021 and is produced by Francesca Moody Productions, Rose Theatre, in association with Kate Gordon and The Popcorn Group. Other theatre writing includes sell-out hit, You Only Live Forever at SOHO Theatre, Reel Life at Ustinov Studio Theatre Royal Bath, and Unearthed, which was chosen as one of the Guardian Readers’ Favourite plays of 2015 and enjoyed a successful UK tour. She trained under the Royal Court Young Writers and Criterion Theatre writing programmes.

Edward Rowe is the writer of Trevithick!, Hireth, Ferguson’s Gang (commissioned by the National Trust), The Cornwall Coliseum (commissioned by Kneehigh Theatre), and two children’s shows, The Cornish Caretakers Miners commissioned by Cornwall Heritage Trust), and The Cornish Caretakers Communications (commissioned by the Telegraph Museum, Porthcurno). Upcoming work includes Wos On?, a sketch show commissioned by 麻豆约拍 Radio 4.

Edward played the lead in the BAFTA-winning film, Bait. For his performance in Bait, Edward was longlisted for Most Promising Newcomer and Best Actor at the 2019 British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs).

Edward also performs stand-up comedy as ‘Kernow King’.

Miles Sloman sums up his Cornish Voices experience