Working Women Productions
Radio and TV Production Company
Working Women Productions is the name of a Radio and TV production company consisting of a collaboration of senior women journalists from the Eastern Region and their associates. They are currently working on a BBC Radio 4 documentary on Women in Westminster.
Working Women Productions is owned and run by Boni Sones with the assistance of BBC Producer Deborah Mcgurran.
"A Monstrous Regiment", Radio 4 Archive Hour, BBC Radio 4 September 10th 2005. Executive Producer: Martin Rosenbaum. Narrator: Jackie Ashley. Producers: Deborah Mcgurran and Boni Sones. Script: Deborah Mcgurran and Eva Simmons. Interviews: Linda Fairbrother, Angela Lawrence, Deborah Mcgurran, Eva Simmons, Boni Sones. Additional production: Smooth Operations. The Harman-Shephard collection of interviews with women Members of Parliament: Curator, Dr. Rob Perks.
To contact Working Women Productions, please email us.
Article...
Women in Parliament - by Angela Lawrence
Deborah McGurran started life in the North West where after completing a degree at Manchester University she trained as a journalist at what was then Preston Polytechnic. She began as a junior, then senior, reporter at the Oldham Evening Chronicle newspaper before freelancing for local radio stations in Manchester and Stoke. She also worked for the Liverpool Post newspaper before joining the BBC in 1990. She became a broadcast journalist for Northwest Tonight moving across to its Liverpool office in 1994.
She moved South in 1995 and started work for BBC Look East and the East at Westminster. She became Political Editor of the Eastern region six years ago.
Boni Sones has been a journalist for 27 years in print, radio and TV journalism and rose to editor level in each of the three media. She has worked at a senior level in journalism for the East Anglian Daily Times, the Cambridge Evening News, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, BBC Look East. Boni has been a BBC political editor, a BBC correspondent on air and was chosen to help set up BBC News 24. She has broadcast many strands in radio and TV on public sector issues. She has subsequently worked for MPs in Westminster. She has contributed regular reports for BBC radio 4 "You and Yours" on public sector issues, education, health, police, housing. She has produced an arts programme of her own short stories for television in the East. She now works in the not-for-profit sector promoting issues of social justice at a national level.
Working Women Productions have been assisted in their work by:
Linda Fairbrother began her broadcasting career in Schools radio in Botswana. That led to work in London as a radio freelance for BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4 ('Today' and 'Women's Hour' amongst other prorammes), LBC, and British Forces Broadcasting. Television work followed, presenting a business programme for the BBC and then news reporting for Thames Television. After working as a reporter and producer for local BBC radio in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, she moved to Anglia Television. For the last 12 years she has been a newsreader, presenter, and senior reporter for Anglia News.
Angela Lawrence is a former political correspondent for the BBC and Senior Broadcast Journalist for BBC Radio Suffolk. She began her reporting career in newspapers and then went on to spend 15 years in the BBC as a broadcast journalist and TV reporter including the "East at Westminster", one of the BBC's regional TV political programmes. She is now a freelance writer. She is writing a novel set during World War 1.
Working Women Productions has been assisted in its programme making by Smooth Operations Production Company, an independent radio and television company based in Cambridge and London. The company is run by John Leonard and Nick Barraclough who joined forces in 1996 after long and varied careers with the BBC. Last year they celebrated their 12th anniversary. Their music documentaries and series feature regularly on BBC Radio 2.
Associates...
Professor Joni Lovenduski: BSc, MA (Manchester), PhD (Loughborough), is Anniversary Professor of Politics at Birkbeck. She has co directed the British Candidate Study 1992-5 and the British Representation Studies of 1997 and 2001. These are studies of candidate selection processes in UK political parties. The results include survey and interview data from politicians and aspirant politicians. The data was collected with special attention to gender issues and effects.