Steve Mardy

Steve has been a university lecturer at Sheffield Hallam, Leicester De Montfort and has taught full-time at the Northern Film School over the past 21 years. He has also undertaken postgraduate research into the radio features and TV documentary films of the late television producer Denis Mitchell.

This research will include examples of contemporary work at the time. Here, his research will elaborate of the richness of the research gathered between 1997-2002 and what has been made by way of documentary since.

What relevance or impact does Mitchell have today in a digital and more mobile world of factual film making practice?

(Charles Parker Prize 2023) Prizes are awarded to students for the best radio feature, honouring the BBC producer and writer who specialised in documentary radio and theatre.

Sara Parker's current radio digital platform delivered to the BBC is a recognisable space which, in part, the early Radio features of Denis Mitchell would make suitable bedfellows. This platform space does offer a new area of discovery for a new generation of students features makers. The annual prize eponymously named after Parker's father is quite rightly justified in modern times for those whom wish to follow the pathways that Parker opened up after World War Two in British broadcasting. The outcomes of his study will suggest that it would be highly beneficial to all studies in this area to allow the earlier work of radio producer Denis Mitchell to exist alongside the works of Parker. Both producers were employees of the BBC one at BBC Midland and the other BBC North.

Steve also has some co-correspondence with a department at Bournemouth University.