A THREE MINUTE READ

Joe Tibbetts is an author, journalist, playwright and documentary filmmaker. He was born in Carlisle, Cumberland on Walpurgis Night 1950. Before he was five he was uprooted and taken to live in India. For much of his childhood he was deprived of education and the companionship of other children and spent so much time swimming in the Indian Ocean that he contracted an incurable medical condition called Pearl Diver’s Ear.

He started to make factual films when he was seventeen, writing and presenting a short TV documentary for BBC 1 when he was still at school. His 2021 film I Am the Self of My Former Shadow ~ a portrait of the artist Dan Walker ~ was voted Best Short Documentary at the Fine Arts Film Festival in Venice (California), Best Documentary at the Kanchenjunga Film Festival in Darjeeling (West Bengal), and shortlisted for Best Short Documentary at the South Coast Film Festival, Hastings (UK).

He has written travel features for The Sunday Times, a weekly column on “New Drama” for Television Today and a column on Architecture and Architects for Design Week. His plays have been performed in theatres across England including Northern Stage (University Theatre Newcastle upon Tyne as was) The Young Vic (London) and The Yvonne Arnaud (Guildford).

Joe has acted as a communications advisor to various UK Government departments including the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Design Council and NHS. He has led export missions promoting British creative industries to countries including Brazil, Philippines and Korea. Joe served on the advisory board of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (UK), was made a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers in 1996 and appointed CEO of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Foundation) in 1998.

In 2010 Joe established Code Light & Content to service the growing need among arts and community organisations for WebVideo and WebTV. Click here for a two minute, Code Light and Content showreel, an episode of Working Lunch with author, blogger and theatre maker Stella Duffy and Darren Henley CEO of Arts Council England and a free-to-view screening of I Am the Self of My Former Shadow.

Joe is a member of The Cooperative Party founded in 1917 and committed to building a society in which power and wealth are shared. He is a member of The National Union of Journalists. He is the Manager of the LinkedIn Documentary Filmmaker Group Joe is the author and publisher of The Poacher a salacious and scurrilous memoir published as a serial online. He was a founder member of England’s first registered co-operatively owned pub ~ The Old Crown in Hesket Newmarket ~ and a founder member of the Theatre Writers Union.