Heather Stewart

Heather Stewart, as Cultural Programme Director UK-Wide, is responsible for developing new audiences across the UK through education and other access channels, opening up and developing the bfi National Film & Television Archive and the bfi National Library, and establishing greater co-ordination between the bfi and national and regional partners.

Heather Stewart has a long association with the bfi from running film societies as a teenager and as a user of bfi library and film distribution services for many years. After studying art history, Heather studied film at New York university, before going on to teach film history and theory in Higher and Further Education in the UK. Since she came to work for the bfi she has a track record in developing the bfi's distribution activities from one-off events and small scale distribution and touring of film programmes into an activity which now includes theatrical releasing and a very successful DVD label, and last year delivered the biggest audiences of any of the bfi's activities, with 60% of these audiences outside London as well as an audience of quarter a million at the international festivals and cinematheques.