PETER DALE
Peter founded Rare Day in 2008 after a decade at Channel 4. He began his career in the cutting rooms of the BBC in the late 70's. In 1980 he directed his first documentary for the BBC One Everyman series and went on to produce BBC documentaries for the following 18 years.
In 1998 he went to Channel 4 as Head of Documentaries. His commisioning credits include Molly Dineen's Lie of the Land, Penny Woolcock's Tina Goes Shopping, Peter Kosminsky's The Government Inspector, Nick Broomfield's Battle for Haditha and Jamie's School Dinners. He was also instrumental in setting up the Channel 4 Britdoc Foundation and FourDocs.
In 2005 he conceived and launched More4, Channel 4's third digital channel. In 2008 he set up Rare Day to produce high quality documentaries and drama for both television and non-broadcast distribution.
EMILY RENSHAW-SMITH
HEAD OF PROGRAMMES
Emily joined Rare Day in August 2009 from Current TV, where she was Director of Content for two and a half years. In that role she led a commissioning team producing short form factual content and the internal production team responsible for producing Current's unique model of crowd-sourced documentary.
Emily's always had a strong interest in documentary and cross-platform media. Before moving to Current she was the producer of 4Docs, Channel 4's Bafta award-winning online documentary channel and was involved in developing and launching the project.
Emily started her career as an assistant in the Documentaries department at Channel 4 under Peter Dale's leadership.
JAMES PURNELL
SENIOR PRODUCER
James Purnell resigned from Gordon Brown's government to join Rare Day. Well, sort of. Before entering Parliament, James worked at the BBC as Head of Corporate Planning and at the IPPR where his ideas included the creation of OFCOM. He was special adviser on the knowledge economy to Tony Blair before his election as MP for Stalybridge and Hyde in 2001. He was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and for Work and Pensions.
He left Parliament in 2010, and has joined Rare Day to produce documentaries and drama. He is also the chair of IPPR, on the board of the National Theatre and Citizens UK.
ANNABEL HOBLEY
SENIOR PRODUCER
Annabel joined Rare Day in March 2011. She has twelve years experience making award-winning documentaries and history programmes at indies and in-house BBC. Most recently she produced feature documentary McQueen & I for More4. At the BBC, she made archive based documentaries like The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon about an extraordinary lost cache of films from the 1900s, science shows like The Man Who Learnt to See and documentaries like Martha & Me. She learnt her craft as Adam Curtis' assistant producer on the BAFTA winning Mayfair Set and on Modern Times. After university she trained as a newspaper journalist, but discovered she loved documentaries more than newspapers.
CLARE SLATER
DRAMA DEVELOPER
Clare joined Rare Day in January 2010. Working with the team, she develops singles and series drama ideas for a variety of channels, and film. She also works as the Assistant Literary Manager at the National Theatre where, since April 2009, she has been responsible for finding and building relationships with the best emerging playwriting talent across the UK and internationally. The two roles cross-fertilise and excellent writers are at the heart of everything Clare does.
JESSICA ROSS
HEAD OF PRODUCTION
(Currently on maternity leave, covered by Jenny Thompson)
Jessica joined Rare Day in the autumn of 2010 and brings with her several years of experience Line Producing and Production Managing a huge range of programmes. Having filmed in over 20 countries worldwide, Jessica's experience includes adventures such as hot air ballooning in Africa, staging an SAS rescue in the Sierra Leonean jungle and reconstructing the biggest bank robbery America has ever seen. In addition, Jessica has worked on many documentaries covering subjects from religion to death, medicine to madness. Jessica oversees a vibrant production department at Rare Day.