ERINMA OCHU

Born in the UK to a Danish Mother and Nigerian Father, I am inspired to tell stories that cross cultural and political boundaries and inspire social change. As a European media professional I have experience in storytelling, short film, cross media, games, interactive production and social innovation. In 2011 I was selected as a writer on the European feature development programme, SOS and in 2008 I was selected to train on EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs programme). With acclaimed short films, including In Memoriam, which was broadcast on British TV under my belt, between 2003 and 2008 I worked as executive producer on an annual slate of up to 8 short films, including several award winners, funded by the UK Film Council, at London based digital agency, B3 Media. My role included securing sales and distribution to MTV and HBO and exhibition at international festivals. Before leaving B3 Media, I helped set up the B3 feature development lab, which included partnerships with BBC Films and The Binger Film Lab.

 With a change in focus, from 2008 – 2012 I worked on social innovation initiatives, bringing my production and storytelling experience, to share stories of social change, from refugees tackling climate change to homeless folk battling social isolation and citizens helping out on science projects. As part of this social innovation and storytelling journey I gained extensive experience working with NGOs, technologists, working with open data and creating user generated content and call-to-action campaigns for promoting interactive content. This experience was most successfully realized as a producer in 2012 on Turing’s Sunflowers (www.turingsunflowers.com), a highly successful crowd sourcing online citizen science experiment with a user generated interactive content campaign developed in partnership with BBC Outreach and launched via broadcast on BBC One. The project had a global media reach of 63.8M with participation in 19 countries.

My current project, #HookedOnMusic (http://www.hookedonmusic.co.uk) launched in October 2012, on which I am the storyteller, has cross media components, including a music game, live children’s show, silent disco and interactive quiz. Following the success of Turing’s Sunflowers, in 2012 I was awarded a prestigious Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellowship, to develop my cross media and storytelling career to pioneer the future of science and storytelling. Most recently I was selected for and participated as a story architect in TribecaHacks Story Matter run by the Tribeca Film Institute at the CineGlobe Film Festival at Cern, Geneva. I trained originally as a neuroscientist, with degrees from The University of Manchester, and went on to work in Science TV (BBC Science) before developing my career as a digital storyteller and producer.