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The Game Changers
In this award-winning podcast Sue Anstiss talks to trailblazers in women sport. These are the individuals who are knocking down barriers and challenging the status quo for women and girls everywhere. Along with openly sharing their historic careers, what drives them and how they’ve dealt with tough challenges, each episode explores key issues for equality in sport and beyond.
We’re incredibly grateful to Sport England who support The Game Changers through a National Lottery award.
You can find out about all the guests at https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Fearless Women in Sport
The Game Changers
Danielle Sellwood: Producing films that change our world
Our guest today is Danielle Sellwood, a former sportswear designer, trend forecaster and women’s sport publisher who now shares diverse stories of sport and adventure through powerful documentaries made by her company Find It Film.
In 2008 Danielle co-founded Sportsister, a trail-blazing sports website and magazine for women, and from 2012 she directed visual campaigns at Women's Sport Trust (WST) helping create lasting change in the representation of female athletes.
Danielle’s passion for filmmaking was born from frustration over the lack of diverse representation in sports and adventure films, so she picked up a camera and set to work to redress the balance.
Alongside this work today, Danielle is an expert in making content and film accessible via open captions and audio description.
Danielle is also a former GB canoeist who in recent years has turned her hand to triathlon, swimming, cycling and surfing.
Danielle shares background to the inception of Sports Sister with Louise Hudson back in what they thought was to be ‘The Golden Age’ for women’s sport, the evolution of women's sportswear and the ongoing challenges faced in promoting women's sport.
It’s fascinating to hear of Danielle’s journey as a self-taught documentary maker to where she is today, creating powerful documentaries that highlight the underrepresented voices of women, the disabled community and older people.
Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.
Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media
A Fearless Women production
Hello and welcome to The Game Changers. I'm Sue Anstiss, and this is the podcast where you'll hear from trailblazing women in sport who are knocking down barriers and challenging the status quo for women and girls everywhere. What can we learn from their journeys as we explore key issues around equality in sport and beyond? I'd like to start with a big thank you to our partners, Sport England, who support The Game Changers through a National Lottery Award. I'm excited to say that in this, the 18th series of The Game Changers, I'll be talking to founders and entrepreneurs, the women who have set up organisations that help change the landscape for all women and girls in sport. My guest today is Danielle Sellwood, a former sportswear designer, trend forecaster and women's sport publisher, who now shares diverse stories of sport and adventure through powerful documentaries made by her company, find it Film.
Sue Anstiss:In 2008, danielle co-founded Sportsister, a trailblazing sports website and magazine for women, and from 2012, she directed visual campaigns at the Women's Sport Trust, helping create lasting change in the representation of female athletes. Danielle is now a self-taught documentary maker, primarily creating content featuring women, the disabled community and older people. Danielle's passion for filmmaking was born from frustration over the lack of diverse representation in sport and adventure films. So she picked up a camera and set to work to redress the balance camera and set to work to redress the balance. Alongside this work, danielle's an expert in making content and film accessible via open captions and audio description. Danielle's also a former GB canoeist who in recent years has turned her hand to triathlon, swimming, cycling and surfing. Danielle, I think of all the guests I've got in this fabulous new series, you're the one I've known the longest, probably from when you were first running Sports Sister back in 2008. So I wonder if we can start there and maybe tell us about Sports Sister and what it was and how it started.
Danielle Sellwood:Yeah, I mean gosh, 2008. I mean it's crazy to think so long has gone since then. And we thought I mean at's crazy to think so long has gone since then. And we thought I mean at that time I was working in trend forecasting, so sort of the tail end of my sort of design career, I guess. When the internet came out, obviously we could all access stuff from all around the world. So trend forecasting for the fashion industry just became like such an instant thing and we would travel around the world. We'd take photographs of what was going. So I'd go to, like you know, the X Games or surf beaches and photograph what everyone was wearing and then we'd upload it to the internet and everybody quite quickly could see what was happening in different places. So it was an amazing thing. So I learned all of my sort of kind of craft of using the internet as a tool to communicate there.
Danielle Sellwood:But of course the trouble with trend forecasting is that you spend all your time looking for the gaps in the market and seeing what's coming up and some of them don't get filled. So I worked specifically in sport and women's sport was still just so light years behind men's sport at that time there really was nothing. There were no real magazines, they were all fitness magazines, which was not really about women's sport. So it was all about body, beautiful and, you know, slimming, all that kind of thing, and and the only information that you kind of get got about women's sport was just snippets in the newspaper, which, as you'll know, was very few and far between, and a certain type of reporting as well. So women were always, you know, like in context of I don't know whether they were a mother or what their job was, or they had a wife of somebody, or were they good looking or blonde or whatever you know it was. You know that was. There was always another side to it, aside from their sport.
Danielle Sellwood:So myself and Louise Hudson decided that we would fill this gap for a media outlet for women's sport In our kind of naive way. We thought, oh, we'll rebrand sport for women. So that was what we set out to do and, gosh, it was hard, it was amazing. But it was so hard because everybody knew this was needed but because it was, in everyone else's eyes, really early, in my eyes, really really late in happening. It was really really difficult to get support Financially, it was incredibly hard, but we set up a website, we even did a print magazine and we basically started reporting on all the women's sports stories.
Sue Anstiss:That just weren't getting any coverage. And I remember at the time so I was running a sports PR agency but I mean Sports Pistol was the place to go to to get coverage. But I remember having conversations with you, probably a bit later, and it was amazing that all these people wanted all this coverage but the brands and others weren't, you know, as enthusiastic to fund that space perhaps in the way that they are now. So why do you think were you just too early? I mean that it does almost feel like you were just way ahead of your time in terms of the product.
Danielle Sellwood:Yeah, I think I mean we were definitely early in terms of a commercial product. You know, like everybody knew there was a need. I mean we know that because, as you say, all the PRs, everybody, all the sports, as soon as people knew that we existed, we were inundated with people wanting us to report on their sport or their athlete or their product, but the brands would not support it in any sort of sustainable or significant way because we just didn't have the numbers at that point. It's the eternal problem of being a startup. You know it's chicken and egg. They won't support until you're big enough. But how do you get big enough without the support? Would get huge brands send us an advert for our print magazine, a full page advert, and say you know, well, this will look really good if you put this in, because all the other brands will think that you're getting lots of money and then they'll support you. But you know like and we tried it a couple of times we put ads in for free. But it just, you know, it was always a struggle. It was always a struggle. Actually, the one thing that, um, we did get some stability at one point because when the women's super league started, sally horrocks really kindly kind of supported us by getting us to do the match day program, so that kind of gave us a bit of an extension on what we were doing. So we did, like the first two or three years of the match day programs, which was amazing but also really challenging because, like a lot of the clubs didn't even have a photograph of everybody, all the women that were playing. So you know it was, it was an extraordinary time of this kind of huge growth in women's sport and this kind of real understanding that women's sport needed coverage and needed support. But it was, yeah, there were still so many balls in the air and it's felt like that for probably 10 years.
Danielle Sellwood:And I must just say we did this one cover I think it was with Beth Tweddle, because we used to do our own. We had an amazing photographer, sean Mallion, who for paltry fees to come and do a front cover, a beautiful front cover photo for us, and that was really important. The visuals were really important because we wanted to show these women as athletes in really beautiful photography. So we had this amazing. I think it was I'm pretty sure it was Best Weddle. Anyway, the title was something like the Golden Age of Women's Sport, and that was like in like 2010. And here we are in 2024. And I don't know if we're quite there yet, but maybe we're getting there now, sort of 14 years later.
Sue Anstiss:I love that about Sally Horrocks. That's so nice to hear as well, isn't it? Look at all that she's doing now. It's that you know women supporting women and all the rest. So what happened to it in the end? And I guess, how did? How did you feel at the end of that? Because I guess I remember being not part of that journey but witnessing from afar and seeing the print edition and 50,000 run and hoping it would grow, and then and obviously then it didn't, and kind of how did you step back from that? How was that for you?
Danielle Sellwood:yeah, I mean trying to think in about 2013. So it was just after London 2012 and we've kind of reached the end of our own we you know ability to sort of fund it. We had had a couple of people come in to help Gary Cole was one. You know people that really supported it. But it needed proper, you know, serious investment. And Tri North actually came on board who were running cricket magazines and various other bits and pieces for sports associations. So they took it on and employed me.
Danielle Sellwood:Louise at that point left, went on to Pastors New and I carried on for a couple of years with their support and again it was a bit like sort of starting again. It was like another level up with some stability and some support. We had some conversations with Sky Sports and various other people that really wanted it to succeed. But you know, it was still a real struggle and eventually it got to a point where I just needed to move on. And you know, after a while it just becomes a bit soul destroying really when you you know you can only struggle on for so long.
Danielle Sellwood:But we had some incredible highlights. You know like we got Olympic accreditation for 2012, which was phenomenal. You know. I said we I imagine we're probably the first all female focused magazine to get that. I don't know. But um, you know, certainly there weren't any others there, but it was hard. And we always said afterwards you know, certainly there weren't any others there, but it was hard. And we always said afterwards you know that if we'd have known how hard it was going to be, we wouldn't have done it. You know, financially it was a massive struggle for a very long time. But we're glad we didn't know because we did some incredible things. We spoke to some amazing women and hopefully we made a small difference to a lot of sportswomen's lives and small start-up brands by giving them a bit of coverage.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah, absolutely, and others' attitudes with that hold on the shoulders of others that came before us, but also other women now in that space and doing more that saw and witnessed and were a part of that too. I'm going to take you back, if I can, to your younger days. Where did you grow up and how was sport part of your life as a young person?
Danielle Sellwood:Oh yeah, so I grew up in Bath from the age of six and I was always so like at school I was. I had like two skills, I suppose that stood out, and that was sport and art. Yeah, I was always sporty. My brother was very sporty and my parents kind of my dad in particular was just very supportive of women's sport. There was never any distinction or that I shouldn't be doing sport. And my brother got into canoeing at school.
Danielle Sellwood:There's a bit of a joke in our family that it was the last sport available and he was late, arriving at the day where you chose what you wanted to do. But for whatever reason, he ended up doing canoeing and I used to go along and he'd go to races on a Sunday. It was your classic, you know, sunday morning driving off somewhere to do a race and I'd kind of tag along. And I do have like one really really clear moment where I was stood on this bank of this canal on a cold winter's morning and this young girl came past and very uncharacteristically for me, as I'm sure you'll agree, sue, I actually thought I could do better than that. I just like looked at her and I thought, you know, come on, speed up and I didn't know, it was just something in me. I just thought I'm sure I can go faster than that. And you know, and I'm not a particularly arrogant person, but it was a very overwhelming feeling.
Danielle Sellwood:So I just kind of took up canoeing then and just got involved and I had been doing gymnastics and trampolining in the days of kind of all inspired by Olga Corbett and Nadia Comaneci. You know that was our big thing as we were children or young girls growing up, so I'd done a lot of those sorts of you know more traditional female sports, I guess growing up. So I'd done a lot of those sorts of you know more traditional female sports, I guess. And then I mean canoeing is like the most unglamorous sport you could possibly imagine, especially back then. You know it's cold, you get very wet and there's no interest in it whatsoever really from the media. So, um, but like it didn't matter to me, I really enjoyed it and I was quite good at it. And I think you know, if you're good at something and you have a bit of success early on, you know you become like junior champion or whatever. Then obviously you know you like that feeling and you want to get better and I've always been someone that just likes to improve and learn and constantly progress.
Danielle Sellwood:And yeah, so I ended up representing Great Britain as a junior and then as a senior and then, a bit later on, I got into very long distance races. So there's one that starts in Devizes in the West Country and goes all the way and finishes in central London. It's like 125 miles. So I did that three times. We set a couple of records that stood for a long time and yeah, it was.
Danielle Sellwood:You know, I think anyone that's involved in a sport for a long period of time from a youngish age, you just build such strong bonds and friendships that just stay with you for life. And yeah, it was a huge part of my life and I would also say that, you know, it did give me a sort of inner strength and an inner confidence that I don't know whether I would have had otherwise. You know, I think you put up with a lot of challenging conditions. You put up with losing, you put up with being worn out and being able to do more than you think you can and having routine and all those things, and it was hugely important and influential on my life.
Sue Anstiss:So you mentioned inner strength. Bloody 125 miles, that's extraordinary, isn't it? So what I mean, what does that take to do in a race like that or a event of that kind?
Danielle Sellwood:that seems enormous yeah, I know it is. It is a bit um nuts and, to be honest, even like beforehand, I didn't imagine how you could do that, because the longest we did any races at that point, you know, very unusually, we might do a three or two or three or four hour race, and this is like 17, 18, 19, depending on what the flow is like. I kind of got a little bit I suppose a little bit duped into it. Our coach at the club, brian Greenaway, he was a veteran of this race and he obviously saw something in me. And there's a series of races that you do, a lot of people that do this race would do, called the Waterside series and they take place on the course, so, and there's four of them and they get longer and longer and you kind of do so. We did those and then like, so I don't know, it felt like it was only like two weeks before the long one. He just said, well, should we do the long one then and I was like, okay, how do we go from doing five hours to doing 17 hours? But, um, yeah, we did it and and again, like I still don't really understand how that is possible. You know, the longest you've canoed for is five hours and then you do 17 hours.
Danielle Sellwood:You know, obviously it's not easy, but you go along. I guess it's broken up and you have a support crew and you go through the night and you know like there's different stages to it and magical moments going. You know when it's dark or you get fed as you're going along and I think it's just quite exciting being part of something like that. It's almost like this little secret club of all these people going down. It's a double canoe, so if you're doing the through race all the way in one hit, it's a double canoe. So you're not on your own. But there are funny moments as well. So we got to Reading. You're not, you're not on your own, but, um, there are funny moments as well, like so we got to reading, so you go along the canal to reading and then you go on the river from reading down to central london and we're at reading doing our kit change. So you're stood on this damp riverside. Someone's just taking your clothes off and putting new ones on. You know, as I said, it's not glamorous. Um, and then we got back in the boat and they just said to me keep talking to brian, keep talking to Brian, he's falling asleep. I was thinking, how can you fall asleep in the middle of the Thames? You know, like, oh my God, that's really terrifying.
Danielle Sellwood:And then, the third time I did it, we actually got lost. We went in the dark. So I was doing it with Steve Baker and we were a really good crew and we actually ended up coming third out of everybody, all the men, and you know it was amazing. But we got lost on the Thames, which is ridiculous. But it was just such a I don't know, we got confused. We ended up. It was so dark.
Danielle Sellwood:We went round on one of the islands on the Thames and ended up going back upstream and I was like Steve the moon's moved, which I know sounds stupid, but you know, bear in mind, we had been canoeing for God knows like 10 hours at that point and I'm like definitely something's different here. And then we saw this crew coming, you know, ahead of us, coming towards us, and I'm like, and we just suddenly went, oh no, like turned around. I mean we'd only lost a couple of minutes, but you know, you just can't believe that you do those kind of crazy things. And you know, know, I mean the people that live along that route. It must be really weird, because every Easter you've got these people walking around with torchlight in the you know, through the middle of the night, sneaking along the riverbank trying to find their crew to feed them.
Sue Anstiss:You know fig rolls or something, yeah and you mentioned that you're a GB athlete, so representing the country. How different was it then? Because that was pre-lottery without aging you and me, but that was kind of pre-lottery funding and UK sport and so on. So what was that experience like and what was the gender balance like in terms of being a female athlete at that time?
Danielle Sellwood:Yeah, I mean it was. To be honest, it was incredibly amateur. You know like we had those old like cotton shirts that basically just got a print of a stripe on the front, like done by somebody in their back room, kind of thing, you know it was. There was no performance fabrics or anything like that, so the kit and all of that was very basic. We did have adidas track suits that were those kind of shiny with a fluffy inside, if you remember those. But um, yeah it.
Danielle Sellwood:Um, I mean the women's team was much smaller, so there was generally only four women. So you had a, a k1, which was single, k2, double and k4 for four because we did sprint canoeing. So you tended to have four or just two women in the team as opposed to the men who would have like at least seven in the team, if not more. In terms of how we were treated, we were just. We were just treated as the women's team in the same way as the men's team. We trained as hard.
Danielle Sellwood:I didn't find it in any way sort of patronising towards the women, we were just athletes, the same. But I do know that I did feel quite isolated socially away from the sport, isolated in the sense that I just didn't know anybody else that did sport like at school or friends or anybody. There was literally nobody that did sport in any kind of semi-serious way. And so I kind of had like two lives. I had the sporting life with my friends in canoeing and then I had my normal life, which was kind of like doing my art or this kind of punky era and kind of being a very different sort of person there.
Danielle Sellwood:And I did seek out I remember seeking out some kind of cultural reference points really, and I sent off.
Danielle Sellwood:It would have been one of the earliest sort of iterations of the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation. They did a newsletter and you could send off a stamped, addressed envelope and get it sent back in the post like once a month or every quarter or something I can't remember. And there were a couple of books. I remember buying some books. There was one called Grace Under Pressure by Adrienne Blue, and then there was another one, lynn Guest de Soit, I think it was called Women and Sport, and I kind of like I sought out those sorts of things to try and find something that felt relevant and kind of made me feel part of something I suppose. I mean, I didn't really find that thing that made me feel part of a group of women that loved sport, and I'm sure that formed all of those that desire to sort of set up something like Sports Sister to kind of give young women that sort of sense of being part of something great, you know.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah, so interesting isn't it, how different it is now and how you already have that appetite to discover more about it. You mentioned the kit that you were competing in and I know you started your career working in sportswear design, so working for some major brands over a decade. So what were you doing there? And what was women's sportswear? Was that? In women's sportswear specifically, you were working.
Danielle Sellwood:No, not specifically, Because women's sportswear wasn't really much of a thing then.
Sue Anstiss:So again, you know.
Danielle Sellwood:Yeah, so this is where I kind of combined my two skills, so sport and art. So I was either going to go down the art route or I was going to go to the sport route. But I'm not very good at science, so I ended up doing fashion and textiles, not really thinking about sport anymore apart from just enjoying it. But then I was like cycling to my art college on my racing bike with my mountain jacket and my rucksack on my back and everyone else is wafting around in Vivienne Westwood or something, or you know their own creations. And actually one of my first year tutors, guy Mathieu, he said to me, have you thought about designing sportswear? And I was like no, he's, like I think you should have a go. You know, it feels like that's what you should do. And I remember at the end of my first year, like it was like the heyday of like windsurfing and everything was like luminous and bright, and so I did a project around windsurfing and then, yeah, so kind of the rest is history really, it combined that thing and I ended up doing my a work placement at the end of my second year doing ski wear at Nevica ski wear, if anybody remembers that also very bright and luminous and very late 80s. And then they funded my collection because if you do fashion you have to put together like a collection for your degree show and and I went to work there full-time straight after that. So, um, yeah, I worked for Nevercur and Puma. I designed Sheffield Wednesday football kit. So that was, you know, it was mostly men's stuff to start with. I would say it was probably 85% was menswear at Puma at that point actually, when I was doing their athletics kit. So it was the time of Linfa Christie and Colin Jackson. So I designed their kit. But I was like, you know, so you've got some female athletes here that you sponsor, but you haven't actually got any kit for them. It's like, can't we just make some kit for them? You know? Um, so we did, I kind of forced that issue a little bit and so like, even if we just do some sample runs you know, because every time you design something you get samples in I'm like, even if we just do the samples and they have the samples, then at least they'll have some kit. Yeah, we did that and and it did change pretty quickly after that I ended up.
Danielle Sellwood:I kind of went freelance after that and worked for Marks and Spencer's and places like that and they were brilliant. They, you know they really wanted to get into the whole sportswear area and did a lot of good stuff early on and yeah, so I had quite a mixed career and I did really, really enjoy it for a good, good period of time, I think I I really enjoyed you know the technical side of it that it was you're buying stuff because you need it for a purpose rather than a sort of a frivolous reason of just needing another item or something, and I suppose I was. You know I would never be able to do it now in the world of sort of fast fashion, because I'm just really not comfortable with that. I always felt with sportswear at that time that yeah, there was a real purpose to designing it.
Danielle Sellwood:I actually wrote my dissertation for my college course on the evolution of sportswear and how it has affected athletic performance, and it was basically that I was outlining how what you wear makes you feel better and go faster. So yeah, that whole point of it for me was was great and I guess then performance fabric started coming in and and the world's really, it really started taking off and by the time I stopped designing sportswear. You know it was women's sportswear, was very well established and sweaty betty and places like that had, you know, um, come along and and stirred things up a bit and and it was in a much better place. And then that's when I kind of started moving away from it really.
Sue Anstiss:It's interesting though, isn't it, when you think of that it doesn't feel that long ago that there wasn't any. And then I wonder how you feel now when you look at what there is, when we've had issues, even in Paris, around the women's kit being, you know, much more objectified, much, you know, much more objectified, much more revealing clothing, etc. So almost like we didn't have it. And then we've had it, and it's massively over feminized too. So what are your thoughts on on where we are now with women's sports clothing? Yeah, I mean it.
Danielle Sellwood:I'm constantly conflicted on this whole issue. I, you know, I've always wanted women to be strong and concentrate on the sport side of it and you know, I found it incredibly frustrating over the years that we were always told, even when I was doing sports, we would be sent photographs of sexualized women like that. That was their key asset. Even we went I think it was about 2009, we went to a women's sport conference and it was all women apart from a couple of blokes, and one bloke stood up and said you know, basically you know, all you've got is your sex to sell yourself. If you want to make money, girls, that's what you've got to do. And I just was so incensed by that sort of attitude and I even I had kind of not is not the same at all. But when I was doing the canoeing obviously it's a very minority sport, it was not the same at all. But when I was doing the canoeing obviously it's a very minority sport and someone did one of the major newspapers did take an interest in the third time. I did it when, when it looked like we would be in the top three out of everybody, all the blokes and everybody. And and I said to the journalist after the interview and they're like well, what's the chance of us getting featured? And she said well, you've got blonde hair, so you know, as long as the photos come out, well, I reckon there's a really good chance. And I was just absolutely fuming and I didn't play ball and I didn't, I tied my hair up and I put my canoe kit on for the photo shoot, like because that's what I am, I'm a canoeist. And you know, guess what? We didn't get featured because the photos didn't come out great. You know, I didn't play the game. I guess that's why I'm conflicted, because I do understand why some women do feel the need to play the game and or enjoy playing that game, you know. But I think it's absolutely essential that we see all types of women represented, all body types. You know, you shouldn't have to look like a supermodel to get coverage. And it does still carry on and I do think it is changing, changing, but it is a constant battle and possibly even at a point where, because more money is coming into the sport, maybe that is actually becoming an issue again. I hope that there's enough women working in the industry now, as opposed to then when it was so much more male dominated. I hope there's enough women in there to try and keep the balance right that we have all types of women represented strong women, tall women, small women, all types. Every type of woman needs to be represented.
Danielle Sellwood:So, in terms of the clothing and what people will wear, I think it's challenging because you wear what you wear as your kit. So in athletics they wear the little, you know, little knickers and the little tiny crop tops and they're so used to wearing that. That is just their culture. They don't think anything of it and I think you know, like we used to wear like little light shorts and a fitted top, I literally didn't think anything of it. I certainly didn't think that I was being sexy by wearing that, you know. But I guess other people might have seen it in another way, because it's completely fitted and I think we have a sort of an issue where A people want to feel part of that culture, of what the look of that sport is.
Danielle Sellwood:You know, and I think you know, personally I think some of the swimwear is incredibly skimpy these days, but I recognise that they're all wearing the same outfit, which means if they want to feel part of that, they kind of want to.
Danielle Sellwood:You know, wear the same as everybody else. I don't know how you stop that happening or if it's our role to do that, but I do find it problematic and I suppose what I would like to see is certainly more athletes demanding options and alternative outfits that they can wear, that they feel comfortable in, and that doesn't mean that you have to be super skinny to wear one outfit or you know stronger to wear another. I think you know whatever makes you feel comfortable and make you feel that you can perform at your best is the most important thing. But I think you know the world of Instagram and everything else has kind of set us back in terms of so many of these young women know that their value lies in how they look and everyone's scrabbling around for sponsorship and it's a minefield. Really it's a minefield, yeah and it's a minefield.
Sue Anstiss:Really it's a minefield. Yeah, our paths actually then crossed again at the Women's Sport Trust, where I was an early trustee and you were the director of a visual campaign. So again, more of that work, of how we represent women. What are you proud of? What are you most proud of? There were lots of campaigns and activities. Was there anything that springs to mind in terms of the work that you did?
Danielle Sellwood:there. So, yeah, I mean, what an amazing time that was with Tammy and Jo setting up Women's Sports Trust, and they just got in touch with us when we were doing Sports Sister actually, and then we kind of you know, we were all kind of sharing our contacts Shelley Alexander from the BBC, head of women's sport at that time, and all these different people that were kind of contributing to try and join all the dots of women that were kind of doing their thing on their own and bring everybody together, which was amazing. And I think I like to think again, like Sports Sister, I think we made a big impact as a group of people. I mean, the Game Changers Awards was incredible being able to highlight people doing great stuff. I always love to champion what other people doing great things and some of the categories were really, really hard because we just didn't have enough. You know, like we're at a great ad campaigns at that time and you know some things we had to work really hard to find things to fill those categories, but that was great.
Danielle Sellwood:But we also did one of the earliest projects I did with Women's Sports Trust was a photographic exhibition that KPMG very kindly offered to support and host in their offices and it was basically seeking out some of the best sports photography of women and this was following on from our covers that we had done at Sports Sister. So looking at photographs of women looking strong, doing their sport, but top quality, beautifully done photographs, and that was an absolute joy to do. And my absolute favourite was one of Christina Hurigu in a sort of start position and it is the most extraordinary, beautiful photograph of a strong woman at the top of her game and her you know her physique and her strength and her determination, her eyes. It was absolutely stunning photograph. Um, and that will that.
Sue Anstiss:That image always stays with me that's so interesting because when I put that question in, it was that image that I still think of, that. If for me that is such a powerful, actually if I can find it somewhere on the internet, I'll put it in the show notes, a link to it on the show notes people can see it because I think for me and across all of that time, that image kind of meant so much.
Danielle Sellwood:I think it was, yeah, as you say, such a powerful, powerful piece also there's such a nice link for me with Christina Hurigu because we had her as our first um cover of our very first pamphlet that we did as sports sister. We got a photograph of her from Adidas that they let us use, so she was our first cover. So, yeah, um, I got a lot of time for Christina Hurigu and her talent. Yeah.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah, lots of synergy there. You're now making brilliant, inspiring content at Find it Films. So how did that process start, how did it begin and what were the first pieces that you made in terms of documentary content?
Danielle Sellwood:Yeah, so I'd actually met Nicola Waterworth who was part of Women's Sports Trust. She was on the board and we kind of both crossed over a bit into the sort of outdoor area, so not pure sport, but the more outdoor sports areas. We were both going to film festivals like the Banff Mountain Film Festival and Kendall Mountain Film Festival and they have these tours and I'd been taking my kids to them from very early and we'd go along and there'd be no stories of surfing and climbing and you know all sorts of quite extreme sports and you know lots of blokes doing crazy snowboarding stunts and stuff. And and there was one film that I had seen and I'm trying to think how long ago, it was hard to say, but my daughter was only like early teens and she's 23 now, so I guess it's like 10 years ago and there was a film called Spice Girl about Hazel Findlay as a climber and she was doing this sheer rock face, I think, with her dad and it was a quite short film and she was just really engaging and really interesting to listen to and she was doing this absolutely, you know, incredible climb and I sat there and I honestly I can still remember how I felt I was just like it gave me so much energy. I was so excited but also kind of like I was such a shot of adrenaline to see this young, very modest but incredibly talented woman climbing this rock and I was like I just had like this driving force in me that I was like this, this needs to be seen in every school. You know, every school girl should see this film. I was just like. I was almost like incensed that you know, it was only at this festival and it was only like being shown to people that were already on board with that whole concept that, you know, women can be like this.
Danielle Sellwood:And I decided we'd do a women's sport film festival ourselves so we could bring together all these nuggets and put them into one festival. So we did that and we ran a festival in Bristol and actually it was quite hard to find that many women's films to bring along and we had no idea how the industry worked. It was just like we should just do it. I mean, that's kind of how I am Like, if there's a gap in something, I'm just going to do it myself. So that's kind of how I am Like. I say, if there's a gap and something, I'm just going to do it myself. So kind of waded in naively and we did it and it was great and I loved it, no-transcript, and so we did that.
Danielle Sellwood:But we didn't have much money. He'd only do a very short film, it's like two minutes or something. And then he owned it and we couldn't show it anywhere else. And I think that just made me absolutely fuming because I was like, well, what else are you gonna do with to do with this film? You know, like you know, you're not going to make money out of a two minute film about some women, young girls in Bristol, you know. So I just thought, right, well, I'm not going to do that again, I'm just going to learn how to do it myself and then we'll own the films and then we can show them to everybody and put them out there. And that's kind of how I got started.
Danielle Sellwood:And again, absolutely naively, I mean it's taken me a long time to learn all the technical side of it and I mean I'm never. I mean I'm gosh, I'm miles from knowing all the technical stuff, but I just learned by doing really. So I kind of got a reasonable camera that I could just about afford and then I just started making short films about people or just going up to, you know, asking people, would you mind? You know, I'd really like to just do a three minute film. And then actually, ellis Brigham, who I knew from my days of doing Sports, sister, they wanted to do some women's content, so they actually funded us with a camera person to do five shorts and I wanted to do something about how it feels to do sports.
Danielle Sellwood:So the series I called Engage your Senses. We had a canoeist, we had a climber, we had someone that was doing lots of different marathons who'd never run a marathon before and they were all different stories and ocean rower. But what we really focused on was what each of these women got from it, what it gave them, how it felt, what the emotions were got from it, what it gave them, how it felt, what the emotions were, why someone might want to do it again, what is it that makes you keep going back to do it again. So it was really tapping into that other side of it. That was nothing about competition or achievement and very much about the experience of doing sport, and I loved doing that. I kind of like, yeah, this is where it's at for me. This is what it's about. And then I just, you know, I got involved with the ocean rower.
Danielle Sellwood:From that, leah Ditton went on to do an incredible row from San Francisco to Hawaii and I worked with her on her film, which I didn't have to film any, we just used all the footage that she had taken and we kind of made it into a sort of 30-something minute film. And that was an incredibly dramatic story but also incredibly authentic. And what a woman to row, not as part of a competition or an event, but just completely on her own from San Francisco to Hawaii Absolutely incredible. And to be able to do all the engineering and electrics that you need on the way and all the other things that are required Stunning. It was an amazing performance.
Danielle Sellwood:So I made that film and that got picked up by a couple of film festivals and and then I guess you know, once you start, you know it's a tiny bit of success then. Then you can sort of start asking people if they wouldn't mind funding something, and so my next film was um around older women doing sports. So we started that before the pandemic I'd met alex rotas, who had been involved in our Game Changers Awards at the Women's Sports Trust because she's been taking photographs of older athletes for probably 15 years now and she'd been telling me some of these incredible stories of women and I just thought, my goodness, these are amazing stories, let's make a film. We got some funding from Independent Age and we started just focusing on four women and making a film.
Danielle Sellwood:It was very late, running massively over budget because of the pandemic, but we got it out there and it's, you know, we're just finishing our little cinema run with it and that's been yeah, it's been very enjoyable little 50. You had 50 screenings, yeah, we did. I mean, you know, some of them were during the day and you, you know that's there's. So it's so challenging to without any marketing budget and you know it's very difficult to get a film out there. But I was really determined that and Alex was too that we wanted it to. We wanted communities to come to it and watch it and have an just sort of put it out on youtube or vimeo or whatever.
Danielle Sellwood:And we knew that when from our film festival experiences, that people were very deeply affected by it, you know, and they wanted to talk about it afterwards. And every time we've done a q a, you know we just can't get rid of people, you know, like at the end they want to stay and talk because it's made such a difference, and men and women. You know, we had a man at Kendall who had just recently had a stroke. Before he saw it and he just he was, you know, he was very emotional because he thought his life as he knew it was over and he was in his 60s, and then he'd seen this 85 year old woman doing 100 meters who'd had a stroke, and it basically gave him the kick up the arse that he needed. As he said, it's an amazing film and that amazing woman.
Sue Anstiss:It's like how she takes the bends because it affects one side of her body. She's so open about the way in which she then approaches her running it's amazing.
Danielle Sellwood:Yeah, so that's that. Yeah, that's dot. So she's our oldest one and she, yeah, she's, she's actually 86 or maybe even 87 now. And, yeah, because she's had a stroke on one side, she can't on the indoor track. It's like going up a hill for her. But we also had, like Sue Yeomans, who's a pole vaulter, and she only took up pole vaulting when she was in her late 40s. I mean, that is something else right. And then we had Joy Lynn, who struggled an awful lot with her mental health over the years. But her running, I mean she is, you know, if she had had the opportunities as a young woman, I have no doubt she would have been an Olympian Olympic champion, even, you know, staggeringly talented woman. And so she runs and throws. She was wonderful. And then we had Noel, who is a race walker.
Danielle Sellwood:I really wanted to cover lots of different types of sports. You know, to give a bit of a. You know a cross section, I think you know definitely having some fields events in there. And then the walking, which is much lesser known, and you know the race walking. I just, I just don't know why that's not. Someone needs to make that a bigger thing because, like she says you know as people get older, the fact that you know like you do get niggles, you do get injuries Like race walking, is just brilliant for that, you know. I think it's great.
Sue Anstiss:I completely agree. It made me want to go out and start race walking when I watched it. It really makes you want to do it doesn't it?
Danielle Sellwood:it's fantastic. You know it really does and like I think it's a really good lesson to all of us, because I'm sure so you're like me, you know, like you don't see yourself as being in your late 50s and that you would, or or that you wouldn't, that you would give up sport. If you've done sport all your life, why would you stop doing it? But, by the same token, it's a whole other thing seeing people in their 80s still competing, or 90s and 100s, and I would never have thought I'm not saying I'll be competing, but to have those. I guess they're just like role models to us. You know, middle-aged women, young women, whatever they are our role models to actually see that still happening. And for them, of course, so much of it is the joy of community and purpose and being together with your friends, and that is a massive part of the film. That really it's the coming together of like-minded people and just enjoying doing their sport together.
Sue Anstiss:And from a practical point of view of your whole self-taught. You're so bloody humble, aren't you? The way you, oh yeah, just picked, picked up a camera, but in terms of the actual even with the rowing, did you, were you editing that footage? Is that, have you?
Danielle Sellwood:you're kind of self-taught in terms of all the editing and creating the content, yeah thank goodness for youtube eh, you know, google is my friend like, how do I do this? You know there's a lot out there to help and, um, yeah, I mean I'm a long way from. And I think the trouble is also, if you kind of learn just by kind of doing, you don't necessarily learn in the correct way. So then when you start working with people that actually know what they're doing, you kind of realize that you're doing it not necessarily wrong, but, um, that there would have been better way of doing it. You, but you know, like I didn't have any money or funding and I didn't have the time to go off to university. So I mean, it's just like it's just finding a way to make it possible really and just having a go. And, like I said, you know, I suppose it's that old art school sort of beginning of my life that you kind of well just get stuck in and have a go and see where you end up.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah, I love that. I love that and your. Your current project is Untethered. So it's a super powerful documentary being made as part of Sky Sports New Focus Fund, and it was an absolute privilege for me. I got a sneak peek this weekend before its release, and it truly is. It's brilliant, it's really moving, it's really funny as well, and I'd absolutely loved it. Um, so, I guess, tell us a little bit more about the subject of the film.
Danielle Sellwood:Yeah, so I mean this is quite close to my heart because I mean they all are. Obviously I can't do projects unless I love them. But my daughter is blind and this is a story about a blind swimmer. So like I understand the experience of you know, I mean I guess I'm a disability ally. I haven't got the lived experience, but having a daughter that's been blind, I guess as close as you get.
Danielle Sellwood:And I had got into sort of long distance swimming or just swimming outdoors like most people had, like in the pandemic, and I'd kind of, yeah, I've really enjoyed being back in the water, having not really done any canoeing for a long time. And just, yeah, it was a way in. And I came across Melanie Barrett on Facebook in one of the open water swimming groups and and she was using bone conducting headphones to a headset to be able to swim outdoors. So she had been 1996 and 2000 Paralympic champion at swimming. But obviously that's in a pool and you know you can count your strokes, it's very straightforward, it's very manageable in terms of you know, it's a controlled environment. But to actually swim outside is a whole different thing. So I was like, oh, that's really fascinating, that's interesting, you know. So I just sent her a little message and I said you know, melanie, I'm really interested in what you do. Would you be interested in me doing like a little personal project, like a passion project, film about you? Maybe I could come and just chat to you and we'll see if we get on.
Danielle Sellwood:She lived a couple of hours away, up in near Warwick, and yeah, we just got on really well. I mean, she's just great. You know, we're like lifelong friends now, but we just got on really well. And so I started doing some filming and and I realised that you know, she had, you know she had a really low self-esteem, despite being such an incredible athlete, because she had had so much discrimination over her life. And, yeah, she just really struggled with who she was. And so it became the film.
Danielle Sellwood:The short film became as much about sort of disability politics as it did about the swimming. And then somewhere in this sort of process of us kind of just getting, you know, moving on, and I was like, oh, maybe I try and get some funding, let's make this something bigger. And then she dropped in this bombshell that, oh, I'm going to try and swim the channel, I'm going to try and be the first blind woman to swim the channel. I'm like, oh my goodness, we really need some budget now because that is a massive story. And gosh, I've lucked out because I'm absolutely in the right place at the right time and I'm, you know, I've kind of made friends with her.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah no, I didn't know that she was gonna do that I didn't realize, that you didn't know that when you first reached out to her.
Danielle Sellwood:Oh wow, you know and then, of course, I'm absolutely paranoid that somebody with a proper camera and a and a broadcast company would like snap her up. So luckily they didn't. We kept going and I kept trying to find some funding and then I bumped into now Sue, you're going to love this because it's a really nice little thing about networking and providing platforms and places for people to talk. I bumped into Anna Kessel at the launch of your Game Changers film documentary and she said, oh, I was just telling her about the access side of it that I was doing so because my daughter's blind. I was learning how to do audio description and I was learning about captioning and I was wanting to make the film really accessible. And she was like, oh gosh, it sounds really interesting. We're just about to launch this fund at Sky Sports. It's called the New Focus Fund and we're really looking for diverse projects. You should enter it. It's called the New Focus Fund and we're really looking for diverse projects. You should enter it.
Danielle Sellwood:And I found it quite hard to find it. And then I found it and it was just like a one article and it was. You know, it was a young black guy holding a camera, was the image. And I was like, oh, they're not going to be interested in me. You know, older woman, you know, yeah, anyway, wrong point of my career, all of that stuff. Anyway, I applied and we went through various rounds and you know, absolutely amazingly, incredibly, we got selected out of the 10 projects. So then ours is a proper full length hour and 20 minute documentary about Melanie this year training to swim with the channel, doing the channel, and then a lot about her backstory as well, and it's been an incredible year. I have to say it has been exceptional. I've loved every minute of it.
Sue Anstiss:And you shared a very powerful post on social media last week talking about how you wanted to incorporate that mantra of nothing about us without us when you're working in that disability space. So what do you mean by that? And I guess, how tough was it to make that authentic documentary, as you say, about a blind woman without your lived experience?
Danielle Sellwood:as you say about a blind woman, without your lived experience. Yeah, I mean, I mean I was obviously having a daughter who, um, obviously she's grown up, brought her up, so I mean I've seen the discrimination firsthand and the struggles, but also she is, um, you know, she's a really, she's really proud of who she is and very, she's that bit younger, she's got that real sort of sense of being, you know, disability, pride and enjoying being different. I have to also give a massive shout out to my dad, who died a few years ago when my daughter was born and they first said to us that she you know, worst case scenario, she could be blind is what the guy said to me after I'd just given birth. Thanks, guy, you know, that's great kind of very. Yeah, we just didn't really know quite what to do. I mean, I wasn't, I was daunted by it, but you know, you just don't know where to start and my dad said my dad, he was a very creative man and he said this will be her greatest asset and it just flipped our whole thinking on its head.
Danielle Sellwood:No-transcript. So yeah, it was a really interesting one because obviously I wanted to be really sensitive to Melanie's story. I didn't want to. You know I because I gained her trust and no-transcript, she would be in the top 25% of everybody swimming. You know, it's utterly disgraceful that there is this discrimination against disabled people. So it was.
Danielle Sellwood:It's a fine balance of of not telling the story I wanted it to be, versus what her story was, and then also involving other disabled people, other disabled talent in the project. So the music was composed by Lloyd Coleman, who works for the Para Orchestra, and he's partially sighted, partially hearing, so you know, and a swimmer, so he was super excited to be involved. That was really important. My daughter's been involved in terms of doing the audio description and narrating the audio description. We've also had that signed off by Ros Chalmers, who works at the National Theatre and is an absolute legend of audio description and access, and then Dr Chris Whittaker, who has worked extensively in disability space.
Danielle Sellwood:He watched it with his wife, fran and they gave me their feedback. And obviously Melanie watched it before we put it anywhere to make sure that everybody was really comfortable with the narrative, that it was true to her experience and true to her, and I know a lot of people are quite often surprised when I say that I would have changed it if Melanie wasn't happy with it. But I would have done, because if she didn't like it, then it's. I don't want it going out there myself. You know, I would have loved to have had a disabled person doing the filming, if possible. Or, yeah, that's something to work on, to get more disabled talent working in the industry generally so that they are telling their own stories and how are you feeling now, ahead of release?
Sue Anstiss:so it's going to be at film festivals and on sky, I think, isn't it when? When can we see it?
Danielle Sellwood:yeah, so it's coming out, um, at, we're premiering at kendall mountain film festival on the 21st of november and I believe it's going out on sky sports around the same time. But yeah, watch this. We'll let everybody know as soon as it comes out. You know, it's going to be fairly unique in as much as the audio description, which is normally something you switch on or off, is going to be live for everybody to hear. We've kind of combined it with a sort of a narration style audio description, so it's kind of almost seamless. We've got open captions on the screen for everybody and we've also got BSL on screen. So you know, the idea was when I pitched it was that it was taking into consideration Melanie's needs first. So Melanie the athlete needed to be able to access this film as a priority over everybody else, which is completely the opposite to how everything is done generally, where access is tacked on afterwards. So that was my starting point and and that's what we've done.
Sue Anstiss:That's brilliant and I, I guess I appreciate from my own experience, uh, of making documentaries not as many as you, but a few, but how tough it can be to find that funding, especially for non-mainstream films and especially when you haven't got the big name, household names in terms of your, your kind of content, the people to follow, I guess. How have you dealt with that and where have you found your funding? You've talked a little bit about, obviously, the Sky Fund and the funding for older as well too, but where have you gone to find that funding?
Danielle Sellwood:Yeah, I mean, gosh, it's not easy, it's really not easy. I am and I'm not even, as you know, I'm not really very good at self-promotion either. So like, in terms of putting myself out there to try and get funding, I'm blooming useless really. So some of it's just been kind of luck, to be honest, and my independent age coming on board for younger, was through a contact. I mean, it's getting to know people, it's networking, it's all that kind of stuff. It really makes a big difference.
Danielle Sellwood:You know, I wouldn't have met Anna well, I knew Anna, but I wouldn't have known about the fund if I hadn't met her at your event. You know it's, it's kind of just, it's just building contacts over a long period of time. But you know, I have no idea what I'm, how I'm going to fund my next film yet. So you know, like it's, every time you start something new, it's it's another challenge and, like you say, if you're not doing a big name story, then it's even more challenging. But actually for me, I mean that's where the real gold lies is, in those untold stories, and that's what I really love. So you know, I'll just carry on doing what I'm doing and find a way, because that's just who I am and what, what I love doing. And yeah, it's not that I'm wealthy, I'm just. I'm just very um low maintenance. I guess I don't need much to be happy.
Sue Anstiss:I love that. And finally, obviously you've achieved so many extraordinary things in terms of driving change women's sport, but also more broadly across society. So so I'll have you got as you sit here now, and obviously there's lots with getting this film out this autumn, but are there other things in the pipeline? What more would you like to do? It feels like you've had quite a diverse range of things that you've done across your career. Is there anything you're setting your mind to?
Danielle Sellwood:Well, I mean this is it for me now, like documentaries. I absolutely loved it. I think it's the best, the thing that I've enjoyed absolutely the most in my career. I mean I've loved everything, but this one really gives me. It brings all my skills together, so like that art school background, but then the storytelling of being a journalist and then obviously women's sport and diverse stories and the unheard stories. It just brings everything together.
Danielle Sellwood:So, definitely staying in the documentary place if I can, I mean there is so much still to be done. I mean where are all so much still to be done? So I mean where are all the big stories? Where are the films about our major female sports stars? They just aren't out there. You look out there and there's all these men stories.
Danielle Sellwood:You know, I find that really frustrating. Obviously that's more challenging because then you've got lots of archive, which is massively expensive. But yeah, I think there's a lot of stories that need to be told, that are much more mainstream than I would normally do but are really important that we have those women's histories out there, the women that have been before and have done these incredible things and been such high achievers and are such role models to so many. I think we need to see those stories, but I think, you know, we just need more and more. You know, we just need to hear of all these different women from different backgrounds, with different body types, different sports they love. You know, we just haven't got a diverse range of role models out there for young women yet, and that's, you know. That's what I'm focusing on.
Sue Anstiss:What an absolute pleasure to talk to danielle. I love her passion to do the right thing and how she's willing to just have a go at everything. It's so refreshing to hear. If you'd like to hear from more trailblazers like danielle, there are over 200 episodes of the game changers that are free to listen to on all podcast platforms or from our website at fearlesswomencouk. Along with elite athletes, you can also hear from coaches, entrepreneurs, broadcasters, scientists, journalists and CEOs all women who are changing the game in sport.
Sue Anstiss:As well as listening to all the podcasts on the website, you can also find out more about the Women's Sport Collective, a free, inclusive community for all women working in sport. We now have over 8,500 members across the world, so please do come and join us. The whole of my book Game On the Unstoppable Rise of Women's Sport is also free to listen to on the podcast. Every episode of series 13 is me reading a chapter of the book. Thanks again to Sport England for backing the Game Changers and the Women's Sport Collective through a National Lottery Award, and to Sam Walker at what Goes On Media, who does such a brilliant job as our executive producer. Thank you also to my lovely colleague, kate Hannan. You can find the Game Changers on all podcast platforms, so please follow us now and you won't miss out on future episodes. Do come and say hello on social media, where you'll find me at Sue Anstis, the Game Changers Fearless women in sport.
