Alice Morrison at TWU17
We are delighted to announce that Alice Morrison will deliver Fail and Thrive at this year's This Way Up conference.
Perhaps it could be considered a back-handed compliment to be asked to do a speech on “Failure”. We all want to succeed, to be the “est”, have the most: get the most bums on seats for our obscure Kurdish film, have the BFI recognise our venue as the best in the country, win the most funding for our fabulous new building. But greatness rarely comes from the soft cushions of success, it is forged in the fire of failure. Join adventurer and former Chief Executive of Regional Screen Agency Northwest Vision+Media, Alice Morrison, for an hour of forging, and some top tips on how to fail and thrive. Get ready to unleash your inner phoenix.
About Alice Morrison
Alice Morrison is a Scottish Adventurer currently living in Morocco. She used to be the Chief Executive of Regional Screen Agency Northwest Vision+Media. She left the rat race for a bike race when she went off to cycle across Africa from Cairo to Cape Town.
She pursued a career in journalism for Middle East Broadcasting, and then BBC News in Arabic and English. She helped launch the BBC News Channel where she went on to become Editor of the daytime hours.
For the new millennium she moved North to Manchester and onto the internet www.supanet.com and started to break out into mini adventures squeezed into the holidays: the Snowdon Challenge, crossing Costa Rica coast to coast, Kilimanjaro, ice climbing in the Andes, climbing the Ruwenzoris....
As CEO of Vision+ Media, she grew the company from a funding base of £830,000 to £10 million per annum and was lucky enough to be in post for region-changing events like the BBC move to Salford and Liverpool’s Capital of Culture. After 9 years of fighting for the sector, she was defeated by a Tory government and their quango cuts, so she cast off her pinstripes and donned lycra.
It was a turning point as she entered the Tour D’Afrique and raced her bike from Cairo to Cape Town. Surviving close encounters with charging wild elephants and very nasty toilets, her first book came out of the experience: Dodging Elephants.
Bitten by the adventure bug, she entered the Marathon Des Sables, the toughest footrace on earth, 6 marathons across the Sahara in 6 days carrying all your own food and equipment.
She loved Morocco so much she stayed and committed to her dream of becoming a full-time Adventurer. Then in 2016, she and Tern TV made Morocco to Timbuktu: An Arabian Adventure, a series for BBC2. It was a dream come true for her. Her quest for the “furtherest place on earth” was an epic journey along the ancient salt roads, over the snow-covered Atlas mountains and across the Saharan sands. She mined for gold, risked death in a donkey cart and spent hours up to her thighs in pigeon shit. She also wrote her second book.