The Sir Ambrose Fleming Memorial Award is a special award which recognises an outstanding and enduring contribution to television in the West of England. 

RTS West of England is delighted to present the 2024 award to director and writer Philippa Lowthorpe at a special early evening event at Watershed, with Philippa in conversation with centre chair Lynn Barlow.

Phillippa is a director of both feature films and groundbreaking documentary, and some of the most powerful TV drama series of recent times.

She is an outstanding storyteller, and a trailblazer, who rooted her career here, in her adopted home of Bristol, and has gone on to become an internationally recognised talent.

Philippa has a touch for making hugely popular Sunday night telly, like Call the Midwife where (she was series launch director) and the Netflix mega-hit The Crown.  She can turn familiar historical subjects into topical, thought-provoking films like The Other Boleyn Girl. And as features director she’s made both breezy family adventure with Swallows and Amazons and funny feminist drama, Misbehaviour which starred Jessie Buckley and Keira Knightley.

She is also perhaps best known for turning some of the toughest issues and most challenging subjects into unmissable television drama. Her take on the Ipswich serial killings Five Daughters was described as “BBC drama at its best”.   Then she went deeper, with an even stronger sense of how drama can, and does, change lives; Three Girls –  a series she directed and starred Maxine Peake, was based on the true story of the grooming and sexual exploitation of vulnerable young women in Rochdale.

That series led to five BAFTAs and Philippa’s second – her first award as director in 2013 was also the Academy’s first for a woman in the category of TV Direction.

Join us on September 24^th to celebrate Philippa's achievements.

Watershed, Cinema 3

Doors open 6pm

6.30-7.15pm In Conversation with Philippa Lowthorpe, hosted by Lynn Barlow

7.15pm Networking and drinks in The Link

Free admission