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Raindance Founder Elliot Grove to be Awarded Honorary Doctorate

From PR Rachel Devenport:

Elliot Grove, the founder of Raindance and the British Independent Film Awards is to be awarded an honorary doctorate on the 16th of July by Plymouth College of Art, member of the Open University, the largest university in the world.

Elliot created the Raindance Film Festival in 1992, and it is now recognised as the largest independent film festival in the UK (Guardian), and one of the leading festivals in the world (Variety and Screen International top 100 lists). The festival was set up to nurture and celebrate independent film from the UK and around the world, and holds one of the UK’s strongest distribution pick up rates for any film festival. He also set up the British Independent Film Awards, now in its 12th year, the IPTV channel Raindance.TV and the Independent Film Trust, set up to support children from disadvantaged or disabled backgrounds communicate through filmmaking.

The Raindance Training programme has helped shape the view and delivery of film training throughout the UK, and has supported alumni from beginning filmmakers to Oscar ™ and British Academy winning figures. For this reason the Open University has decided to recognise his commitment to ‘Services to Education’.

To celebrate the doctorate, Plymouth College of Art and Raindance have announced an exciting series of events that will pave the way for the two to collaborate on a unique and ground-breaking film-making programme that will launch at the College in September 2010 through the joint development of a new foundation degree in independent filmmaking.


This summer is a particularly exciting time for the partnership; following the award of Elliot’s Doctorate, August will deliver a series of Raindance masterclasses in partnership with the College’s Creative Business Services ‘Summer of Creativity’. For more information visit www.creativebusinessservices.co.uk.