Who are we?

Fiona Veitch Smith

Fiona is the co-director and documentary journalist of ’The Last of the Gypsy Royals’.  She was born in Northumberland. She has worked as a staff journalist for Independent Newspapers in Cape Town and in the UK as a freelance magazine feature writer and editor. She has had over 100 articles published in magazines as diverse as Sports Illustrated and Plain Truth where she is the New Writing editor. She writes for screen and stage and has recently won the People’s Play Award for her play Pig Stew. Her short film Enemy Lines has been screened at the Soho Film Festival in London, the Short Short Film Festival in New York and the Branchage Film Festival in Jersey. She is the editor of The Crafty Writer, a popular blog focusing on all aspects of fiction, non-fiction and dramatic writing. She teaches creative writing and non-fiction writing at the North East Centre for Lifelong Learning and lectures in writing for the media at Newcastle University. She also lectures dramatic writing at Northumbria University.  Fiona holds a BA in Journalism and History, a MA in Creative Writing and is currently researching a PhD in the adaptation of children’s literature to the screen. This is her first feature-length documentary. She’s certain it’s not going to be her last.

Tony Glover

Tony Glover is the producer and co-director of ‘The Last of the Gypsy Royals’. He is a writer and film-maker, born in Northumberland. His first film, Posh Monkeys won a Royal Television Society award and the IAC International Film & Video Festival Gold Seal Award. It was promoted by the British Council at the Angers, Munich, BAFTA, BP Expo and New York film festivals. Irene’s Story, a documentary about bi-polar disorder, won a Millennium Award. I Want My Baby, a film devised with young people from Greenfield Arts in Newton Aycliffe, won an Impetus Award. Year of the Tiger, set in Newcastle’s Chinatown, was filmed by Wildcat Films for Yorkshire Tyne Tees. Stage plays include Chase Me I’m Chocolate (staged in Darlington); Slappers (staged at the Unity Theatre Liverpool) and The Stars that Surround Us (Newcastle Playhouse). Sticky Fingers won the People’s Play Award. What We Did In the War is a book about the wartime memories of the people of Darlington. Just a Trim won a Sony Radio Award and earned him the title of BBC North Playwright of the Year. He lectures in dramatic writing at Northumbria University.
 

Contact us

If you’d like to get in touch with any of the team please fill in the form below, and one of us will get back to you.