Biography

Sheila Hayman is a British-born BAFTA-winning producer/director of shows for the BBC, Channel 4, and others, who now shoots and edits her own films. In 2010, Mendelssohn, The Nazis and Me was nominated for the Grierson Award as Best Arts Documentary, and in 2012 she wrote, produced, and directed a multilingual miniseries about the Enlightenment which reached an audience of 150 million in China, France, Germany, Austria, and other countries. Recently, Hayman has moved into digital media and music, with apps, digital projects, and interactive performances for organizations, such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the English National Opera.

Current collaborations include projects with Berlin’s Music Tech Fest and bionic performance artist Viktoria Modesta, as well as Utopia 2016 and a new project with the BBC focused on Fanny Mendelssohn and the International Women’s Day 2017 celebration. She was named Young Journalist of the Year in 1990, and has written for Britain’s national broadsheet newspapers and published three comic novels about domestic life. Hayman also runs a therapeutic creative writing group through the organization, Freedom from Torture.