It is with great regret that both Chris and I have this week been forced to write this statement, as a result of Future Artists making numerous allegations in public that insinuated NWNW was involved in investigating them, and creating “secret dossiers” highlighting their alleged bad business practises. The statements are below.
As you can see, Future Artists claimed they had receiveda 4 page investigative dossier, and attributed its creation to the “NWNW.”
The final image above is from an even earlier false allegation which claimed we had “blacklisted” them from our blog. How it is even possible to ban anyone from a blog, where there is not a membership function, we do not understand. We’ve never had so much as a post-comment from Future Artists to even be blocked, rendering this allegation a complete falsehood.
We are incredibly disappointed that Future Artists, or specifically their MD, Mark Ashmore, has taken to insinuating NWNW in such matters; his statements are entirely innaccurate, lacking in context, have no founding or proof, and are incredibly disappointing and hurtful at a professional and personal level.
Let us categorically state that we here at www.northwestnewwave.org.uk (which is Chris Lane and myself) have not, and never will, be involved in compiling dossiers and investigations into any organisation.
We are here to help filmmakers communicate, and to make filmmaking easier. Not write reports on anyone else.
We contacted Future Artists to ask why they had made these claims and who had written this document. Mark Ashmore replied to us stating that he was glad to hear it wasn’t us after all (he had not checked first before making his statement) and claimed the dossier had been written by a film-maker who was claiming to represent the NWNW, and so that was why he made his statement as such.
We replied politely and privately expressing our concern that on the whole, assigning the dossier to “NWNW” would immediately make people think that as being both Chris and myself as the editors of www.northwestnewwave.org.uk.
Concerned by these public claims lacking in context and that someone maybe falsely representing us, we asked for two simple things from Future Artists.
1) That Future Artists share this dossier with us, as it was in all our interests to see if anyone is indeed impersonating www.northwestnewwave.org.uk.
2) That Mark Ashmore issue a statement on Facebook, where his original public statement was made, clarifying and categorically stating that the dossier was not by Chris Lane, Colin Warhurst or www.northwestnewwave.org.uk.
The burden of proof always lies with the originator of a statement, and from our position, many of Future Artists readers were/are currently under the belief that we have been creating such dossiers.
Any professional business or persons would have acted on our concerns immediately after discovering we had nothing to do with their claim, yet Future Artists have refused to resolve or clarify the issue with any expediency.
Chris and I initially tried to conduct all of this via mail, but Mark Ashmore initially claimed he was too busy to read all our emails at that moment. We wrote back expressing our concern that time was of the essence in clearing our reputation as his statements (at that time) were still public and he had not yet corrected or clarified them. Yet Future Artists still failed to respond in proper professional time, with any urgency or even to recognise the potential damage they had done to us. We were then forced to ask them publicly, and politely, to issue a statement.
Mark eventually replied to us via email stating that he deleted the “original comment” and so thought the issue over. We explained that he made more than one insinuation against “NWNW” and that his readership would still be under the belief we were involved, until or unless he publicly cleared our name with a clarifying statement. We explained repeatedly that deleting the original comments is not the same as a public correction or retraction.
We were still waiting 8 days later, when we got this completely inadequate comment added to the end of one of our clarification requests. His comments and our request on the Future Artists page have since been deleted.
More than a full week has now passed and Mark Ashmore is still yet to clarify and clear us here at www.northwestnewwave.org.uk from his statements. He is also yet to provide proof of the dossiers existence itself, or at least that it’s owner was indeed impersonating NWNW as he claimed.
To protect our own reputation, because of the way we have been ignored and with no action taken by Future Artists to fully clarify the details of their original claim, we have been forced to attempt to clear our own names publicly with this statement, as Future Artist have utterly failed to quickly and amicably settle this situation, which was of their own making.
This statement serves three purposes.
1) To categorically state that Chris Lane, Colin Warhurst and www.northwestnewwave.org.uk have not created, compiled or commissioned any documents of any kind into the practises at Future Artists. We are filmmakers, not journalists. We are entirely innocent in this whole affair.
2) If Mark Ashmore’s claims are true, and a dossier does exist, then we are of course concerned that someone is masquerading as “us” here at www.northwestnewwave.org.uk – If a dossier does exist, we would ask that it’s creators to please act as yourselves and leave NWNW or any other film-makers out of it. Deal with Future Artists yourselves. (If the dossier exists, we would still like to see it please to find our impersonator and clarify the phrasing of the alleged NWNW ‘authorship’).
3) To express our utter disappointment with the way Future Artists MD Mark Ashmore has completely failed to conduct himself, for insinuating us in his claims, and not providing clarification for a statement he made which had the potential to cause lasting damage to our reputations.
As the aggrieved party, we felt we acted politely, diplomatically, trying (but failing) to settle this quickly and amicably out of the public eye. As time progressed, we had to attempt a prompt in the public eye to motivate Mark Ashmore to clarify his statements, which at that time are/were still out there, remaining un-corrected to the Future Artists readership.
We do wish to acknowledge that the actions and failure to act of Mark Ashmore, MD of Future Artists, does not reflect on, nor is meant to implicate, the members of the Future Artists Co-op and we wholly acknowledge they have nothing to do with situation or Mark Ashmore’s statements. We continue to wish them, and all other film-makers, the best of luck and our continued support.
We regret having to go this far just to clear our own names and to prove what Mark Ashmore has failed to do. We do feel that we have the right to defend our own reputations from allegations such as this, and it is a shame Future Artists did not clarify this themselves, which would have prevented us form having to go the trouble of crafting such a necessarily lengthy defence of ourselves and our work here at www.northwestnewwave.org.uk.
Based on his utter lack of responsibility in dealing with us, his actions, the evidence of his apathy from the past 10 days, and that at the time of writing we have been waiting over nine days and counting to have our names cleared, both Chris and I can prove something about Future Artists based on our experiences this week that does not need 4 pages in an anonymous dossier, only 5 direct words from us based on what has occurred this week.
Future Artists have acted unprofessionally.
At the time of writing, we are still waiting for a clarification to his readership.
To stop this post being entirely doom and gloom, and to help further clarify that www.northwestnewwave.org.uk is not about compiling reports into other film-makers, here is the video from our first NWNW event, the HD-DSLR film club.
Hopefully this shows a little about what we are about. Filmmaking.
Our second event will be announced soon, we hope you’ll attend and share your film-making tips and adventures with each other.
Many thanks for your understanding, Colin Warhurst (& Chris Lane as Editors, www.northwestnewwave.org.uk).
