Jamie Starboisky

Best British Jury

The bedrock of Manchester-based Director/Producer Jamie Starboisky’s multimedia work is his training in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Salford, leading him to an awareness of whose stories are not told. He has been working for years to signalboost marginalised stories: he founded the Queer Media Festival (2013), the MobDoc LGBTQ+ mobile filmmaking workshop (2015) and Fusion, produced in collaboration with UK Black Pride (2014). Queer Media Festival in Manchester, has been held five times; for the past three years it has been held at HOME, Manchester’s £25 million pound combined arts centre and returns to the venue this November. Jamie’s work on LGBTQ+ historical media began in Los Angeles in 2014, interning with LGBT film festival Outfest in their Development and Legacy Project departments. He was also accepted to the LGBT Studies summer school at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). This three-month trip to LA was facilitated by a Santander International Travel Bursary from the University of Salford. As a producer of LGBTQ+ digital projects, Jamie was mentored by Manchester International Festival last year in their Creative 50 scheme which had 50 local emerging artists produce two digital responses to the work in their festival. Following Crossover Labs’ VR pitching workshop, he developed the idea for a queer virtual reality experience during a residency this January at the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio with guidance of Head of Digital Toby Coffey. This summer Jamie took his MobDoc LGBTQ+ mobile filmmaking workshop to GAZE LGBT International Film Festival where he and Deirdre Mulcahy from BBC Academy taught how to make a film on mobile phones to festival delegates funded by British Council Ireland.