Industry Advisory Group

Our Industry Advisory Group (IAG) is a collaborative initiative between academia and industry, which allows us to unite the strengths and expertise of professionals from diverse sectors and our esteemed academicians to curate a contemporary, industry-oriented, and globally relevant curriculum for our students. The IAG comprises industry leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs who bring knowledge, insight, and experience, and their collective wisdom helps shape our educational programs, ensuring our students are well-equipped for success in their chosen careers.

We believe education should be a collaborative process, and this vision forms the core of the Industry Advisory Group. The group’s insights feed directly into our Learning and Teaching Committee, ensuring our programs are comprehensive, intellectually stimulating, and finely tuned to industry demands. By facilitating conversations, generating innovative ideas, and initiating impactful changes, the Industry Advisory Group plays a central role in shaping the future leaders of our society.

Together, we aspire to create a robust, future-ready academic environment that absorbs industry insights to build knowledgeable, skilled, and competitive students, graduates and alumni. We are committed to enhancing the quality of education at Futureworks, driving innovation and progress for our students and the industries that will soon welcome them.

 

Matthew Boone

Matthew is an experienced Filmmaker and Creative Director, proficient in all aspects of end-to-end video production. His areas of strength lie in building and developing creative campaign concepts across video, photography, and other visual assets for a diverse range of clients and projects for his company Made by Boone. In addition, he has produced a wide range of music videos for bands, creative clients, and organisations, bringing a high level of practical and commercial knowledge to our media schools.
Connect with Matthew on LinkedIn

Enos Desjardins

Enos is an award-winning Finnish Canadian sound designer/editor based in London. He works on arthouse indie films all the way through to feature films, TV series, games and commercials as a sound effects editor, re-recording mixer, and supervising sound editor. Enos believes that sound is an integral part of the storytelling process, going beyond just making things sound good. He approaches each project with an open mind, attention to detail, and a desire to help tell the story, enhancing the audience’s experience and supporting the director’s vision.
Connect with Enos on LinkedIn

Jess Hider

Jess focuses on reimagining what gaming could be through restorative design. Having worked on a number of award-winning games and in a variety of roles across the industry, her adventures have led her into the natural and magical world of Everwild, as a Senior Designer at Rare Ltd. When taking a quiet moment to breathe on this journey, as a Mind member and campaigner, Jess explores how we can practice meditation, mindfulness, and self-care through video games and is deeply supportive of the ‘cozy games’ movement.
Connect with Jess on LinkedIn

Marie-Claire Isaaman

Marie-Claire is our Chair and CEO for Women in Games, an organisation that provides encouragement, support and advocacy for women and girls throughout the UK’s game industries and educational pipeline. She strives to improve the recruitment, retention, and progression of women by championing female talent and challenging gender imbalance, inequality, and discrimination across the creative sectors. They continue to expand their social networks using new and innovative spaces to engage with and support our community, such as Twitch, Discord and Clubhouse.
Connect with Marie-Claire on LinkedIn

Jey Kazi

Jey is the Lead Audio Designer at the world-class, award-winning game developer Sumo Digital’s Sheffield Studio. His approach to game audio is technical but also creative being comfortable working with middleware, scripting, and the game engines. In addition, he has a holistic approach to game development where feedback and teamwork are paramount. Jey was a member of our first Game Audio for Audio Engineers Diploma cohort to graduate in 2013; he became a full member of BAFTA in 2023. Connect with Jey on LinkedIn

Pete Leonard

Pete is an Outsource Producer at Lucid Games, where he manages outsourcing production and operations. In addition, he manages the relationships, the pipeline of partners, and the production/budgeting for outsourced support. He spent five years at REALTIME on multiple projects from an outsource perspective while managing recruitment. Pete joined the studio side of the games/CG industry following a 12-year stint in games recruitment at Amiqus.
Connect with Pete on LinkedIn

Nigel Moore

Nigel co-runs Fuzzy Duck Creative and has been key to its continued growth and development, championing innovative technologies and creative methodologies. In addition, he is an experienced producer and project manager. As Production Director, he oversees 40 plus productions a year, including filming drama and documentary, motion graphics and animation, touchscreen interactive programs, audio sound installations, Apps, and websites. Fuzzy Duck Creative can be found in the creative centre of the Northwest at Media City in Manchester/Salford.
Connect with Nigel on LinkedIn

Demonét Stapleton-Rawlins

After receiving the ‘Best Work Award’ for his final project at the Futureworks Graduation ceremony, Demonét set up his own videography company called SuPeR OG Productions. He is Head of Videography at Leeds based marketing agency 21 Degrees Digital, responsible for creating and producing videos and photography for global brands such as Marks & Spencer, Foot Asylum, Audere and Angelica-Craft House (D&D London Group).
Connect with Demonét on LinkedIn

Jode Steele

Jode is co-founder & composer at The Horror Vault and Verbal Vigilante Music, specialising in music production & publishing for media. He works with creative agencies, movie studios and production companies in Los Angeles, New York & London to deliver music & sound design for motion picture advertising campaigns and television shows, including clients such as Disney+, HBO, Warner Bros, Sky, and Netflix. He is currently working with our VFX team on producing an industry brief and commercial outcome integrated into a module assessment. Connect with Jode on LinkedIn

Angela Ankeli

Angela is a BA (Hons) graduate and creative artist of African heritage and has been active in the creative industries for over 20 years. She has applied her skills in media production, digital content creation, 3D character design, scriptwriting, storyboards, and animation. She trained with the BBC, and Granada TV runs a consultancy and creative enterprise business that works with African & Caribbean community groups, charities, and corporate and individual creatives focusing her activities on the UK and African territories.
Connect with Angela on LinkedIn

Richie Martin

Richie Martin graduated with a first-class ‘Game Art’ degree from Futureworks in 2016, developing into a highly skilled 3D Environment/Prop artist, demonstrating his passion for integrating art into games. He is currently working at Ubisoft in Düsseldorf, Germany, as an ‘Environment/Prop Artist’, having previously worked at Airship and Playground Games in the UK on games such as Forza Horizon 4.
Connect with Richie on LinkedIn

Verdiana Saint Amour di Chanaz 

Verdiana shapes sound to bring visuals to life using her knowledge of psychoacoustics to transform moving images with sound using her experience as a sound editor and designer and applying her skills as a Sound Editor and Dialogue Engineer. Based in Rome, she has built a successful career working on international feature films, commercials, and band projects; luckily, we can call on her expertise in sound and composition.

Connect with Verdiana on LinkedIn

Sam Taylor

Sam Taylor is Head of Skills Development at Realtime based at their Manchester studios and brings valuable experience from both industry and academia. He started as a junior generalist with REALTIME in 2015, working his way up to a VFX generalist working on projects such as World of Tanks, SMITE and War Thunder. He joined Bolton University as a VFX and Animation lecturer and continued as a freelance VFX generalist on various movies and TV projects during his time as an academic. Connect with Sam on LinkedIn

James Bagshaw

Academic, Composer and Music Producer, James is an alumnus of our Music Production programme. He continued his academic journey by studying for a Masters in Electroacoustic Composition at Manchester University and a Ph.D. at Hull. He has lectured in our School of Sound, sharing his knowledge and applying his diverse skillset that spans production, composition and new music technology, such as Dobly ATMOS, Surround sound and now AI. He currently works as Operations Coordinator at Wonkhe. Connect with James on LinkedIn