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The Doc/Fest Mentoring Programme

Are you a documentary or interactive media professional looking for structured mentoring in devising great projects, getting funding and reaching audiences?

We're offering a new year-round mentoring opportunity for documentary, factual media and cross-platform directors, producers and creatives to get advice, support, and a bespoke action plan for getting their projects funded, made and out there.

We'll devise an individual mentoring plan for you consisting of a total of 8 hours one-to-one mentoring over a maximum of 3 months. The mentoring is ideally in person (and we'll travel to you if needed!) but could also be on Skype or on the phone. The mentoring can be broken up into any discreet units, such as 4x 2-hour sessions or 8x 1 hour sessions.

Some of the areas we can offer guidance in are:



- Accessing finance from traditional sources such as Broadcast through to crowdfunding, foundation and grant funding, and philanthropy
- Understanding distribution models including broadcast, theatrical, hybrid distribution, self-distribution, community and grassroots distribution, educational distribution and online distribution
- Preparing and packaging work for Film Festivals including understanding how to navigate a festival screening strategy and how to use festivals to maximise attention for your film
- Navigating international factual markets
- How to pitch your ideas successfully on paper and verbally to get different kinds of funders and supporters interested
- Working with interactive and cross platform media including knowing how to devise a workable interactive project across multiple platforms, understand a need for users, and work out who funds cross platform.
- Connecting successfully with audiences, fans, followers and advocates
- Building a fan base
- Strategising Outreach Campaigns and having social impact
- Knowing what's been made out there in the world at the moment and what funders and audiences are looking for
- Advising on narrative and storytelling and pitching
- Aiding with production plans and budgets
- Aiding with IP and rights models in presales, distribution and exhibition
- Aiding general connections between the filmmaker and the industry
- Feeding back on rough cuts
- Lowering environmental and human impacts of production, distribution and exhibition of independent factual film and media
- Making a living as an independent filmmaker

Each of these areas combine to form different modules and as part of the personal mentoring programme we devise for you, we'll put together structured modules so that every moment of your mentoring is useful.

The Doc/Fest Consultancy will empower you to make the right decisions that that suit your current productions and overall career plan. In some cases, we might navigate access to funders and resource-holders, but the aim of the mentoring is primarily to allow you to be self-sufficient and more confident.


If you're interested, read on for further information or mail charlie [at] sidf.co.uk with any queries or to apply to be mentored. Mentoring costs £500+VAT for 8 hours over a maximum of 3 months and you may be eligible for a bursary towards this cost from Creative Skillset - ask us for more details

What Can Sheffield Doc/Fest Offer You?

The team at Doc/Fest years of experience in delivering training and consultancy offering support to professionals in creative and digital industries and access to new financing models, distribution strategies and project development training. Every year we give support to hundreds of documentary, factual media and digital people.

We operate one of Europe's biggest and highest-impact factual marketplaces. Through our MeetMarket pitching opportunity, public pitches, marketplace networking events and several year-round workshops, Doc/Fest has been involved in facilitating the planning for the development and delivery of numerous successful projects. We've worked year-round for the last decade to provide case-by-case personal advice for filmmakers and individual strategies for raising finance and audiences. As a result of these interventions, millions of pounds, euros and dollars have been raised, and millions of viewers have been reached.

Doc/Fest has been at the forefront of initiating and promoting moving image innovation in the UK in the last 5 years. Through our Crossover Labs and Seize The Future workshops, as well as the festivals themselves, we have introduced to the UK and the rest of Europe practical guides to crowdfunding, self- and hybrid-distribution, audience outreach, online distribution, convergence, interactive media production, and been a loud voice for celebrating new ways of doing business with digital media.

Now we want to offer this mentoring to a larger and wider number of filmmakers, and provide attention to detail and expertise in new ways of funding, distributing, exhibiting and marketing for YOU.

The Doc/Fest Mentoring Programme allows individuals and businesses to receive targeted creative and business plans that relate these big issues to your specific needs, and secure sustainable futures as creative makers and workers with our help.

Who can Apply to be on the Mentoring Programme:



- You can be at any stage of your projects, from concept through to exhibition/impact
- You can ask for mentoring on one project or a whole slate
- You can be working on any platform(s)
- You can apply to us any time of year, though we're less likely to offer mentoring between March and June so that we concentrate on the festival.
- You should have a clear aim for what you want to achieve in the three months of mentoring - it may be sensible for mentoring to continue beyond the initial 3 months, depending on your need, but you should work on the basis that 3 months can deliver what you want.
- Mentoring costs £500+VAT for the three months, paid up-front. You may be eligible for a bursary towards this cost from Creative Skillset - ask us for more details
- Any additional costs such as attendance at festivals, markets and events, training events or additional fees that arise from suggested partners (e.g. fees to VOD aggregators) will be borne by you, though the Doc/Fest team may be able to negotiate favourable rates as part of the consultancy process.

How To Apply for the Mentoring Programme

Email charlie [at] sidf.co.uk with:


- One page on what you hope to achieve from the mentoring, especially the goals you're looking to achieve as part of it
- One page of biographical information (not a CV)
- Any supporting visual materials