Before we get to who we are and what we do, shall we talk about our name? It’s one of the first things people ask about!
Mile 91 is a town in Sierra Leone. Catherine and Ben worked there during their first story gathering trip together, all the way back in 2007. Six years later when we founded our agency we gave a nod to where it all started.
We are a storytelling agency for people who do good things. We work with charities, sustainability teams, philanthropists, unions and other social change folk. We help our clients to tell amazing stories, through our production work, by training their teams in story gathering skills, and by supporting them to develop robust strategies, systems and processes.
We are deeply committed to ethical storytelling practice. Our approach is grounded in care, respect and dignity. Our commitment to best practice in safeguarding, risk assessment and informed consent make us a partner you can trust, whether we are gathering stories for you or supporting in training and strategic consultancy.
We have a talented team of associates working alongside us.
Catherine
Catherine started specialising in storytelling when she set up the story team at an international development charity in 2006. For more than 20 years she has been helping organisations to establish the strategies, systems and processes needed to run an effective content gathering function. She is quick to identify barriers to productivity and helps teams break down silos. She also set up and leads the popular Story Network. She has developed our storytelling masterclass programme and leads our training, coaching and mentoring work. She is the first port of call for new business enquiries and oversees workflows. In short, she is a planner through and through.
Ben
Ben has worked in more than 30 countries and in hundreds of UK communities, photographing and filming in challenging environments and with sensitive subject matters. He established the look and feel for Mile 91’s films and photography, which upholds the dignity of the people at the heart of a story and finds the joy and courage in the hardest situation. He designed our popular smartphone filmmaking course which has now reached over 2,000 budding filmmakers. Once rarely off a plane, his commitment to international storytelling has evolved into helping our global clients to develop the co-creation capabilities of their frontline staff.
Sarah
Sarah has been a Mile 91 Associate for 12 years. Formerly a Sky journalist, Sarah has had story gathering roles at Comic Relief, VSO and Crisis, and has also worked as a Yoga Therapist for children and young adults who are facing mental health problems. Using this trauma-informed lens, Sarah is passionate about ensuring that people feel safe and supported while they share their stories. She has experience in the areas of mental health and suicide, traumatic injuries and diagnoses, debt, homelessness and the care system.
Ruth
Ruth has worked in story gathering for over 20 years, including senior roles at the NSPCC and the BBC. She specialises in trauma-informed, ethical storytelling and in ensuring people’s voices are heard with dignity and care. Ruth has supported survivors to inform and shape national and international policy, including the groundbreaking Online Safety Act and the Domestic Abuse Act. She advises organisations on how to work with lived experience voices safely and sensitively, advising on safeguarding, sensitive interview skills, and storyteller care.
Alex
Alex has been writing powerful stories for charities for well over a decade. Through Mile 91 she has worked with the British Red Cross, TUC, Teenage Cancer Trust, ChildHope and more. Alex’s natural warmth encourages people to open up and she loves digging for the ‘gleaming details’ that make her stories stand out. Her most memorable Mile 91 moment was interviewing Dai Donavon, the trade unionist and former miner whose story inspired Pride – one of Alex’s all-time favourite films.
Ben
Ben is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has been shown on TV and at festivals across Europe. He specialises in campaign films for charities – his films for the homeless charity Crisis have received over a million hits on YouTube. For Mile 91, Ben has worked on films for Sense, Chestnut Tree House, Centrepoint and the Red Cross, among others. He is also a trainer for our smartphone filmmaking course. He has made films with musicians including Rufus Wainwright and filmmaker Ken Loach.
Lucy
As a sustainability copywriter, Lucy makes sure brands on a mission have the right words for the job – whether that’s helping an ethical pet food start-up disrupt the status quo, or supporting the world’s biggest fashion brands as they call for change across their industry. Lucy has been a copywriter for over a decade and has supported Mile 91 on several projects. She joined us in helping the TUC celebrate their 150th anniversary with 150 stories about the people who have shaped the union movement.
Jesse
Jesse works across narrative, documentary and social media projects. Aged 15 he won the Bridport Young Filmmaker’s Competition and went on to study at The Northern Film School (Leeds). His films have screened at The Cinema Museum (London), REEL Film Festival (Texas) and Indy Film Library (Netherlands). He’s worked with Mile 91 since graduating in 2023, including on films about the rights of asylum seekers. Other recent work includes a promo film for Adidas and the Women’s World Cup and a Mind event.