The Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2010 has commended Footprint “for the ways it is promoting sustainability, both through its film production and through wider company operations.”

The panel said Footprint’s major strength came from “checking all resources and suppliers for sustainable, ethical and responsible policies.” 

Footprint’s travel policy, its commitment to measuring and managing waste and emissions, working to the Code of Best Practice in Sustainable Filmmaking and promoting the benefits of sustainability to the public were also praised in this year’s Queen’s Awards.

Footprint Television has been named as one of the top new creative companies in the South West.

In 2009 Bristol Media published The Top 100 South West Creative Companies League Table – the first ever round up of the major TV, digital, publishing, PR, design and marketing companies based in the region.

Established names such as Future Publishing, Bray Leino and Aardman top the list - but in only our second year of operation Footprint has made it onto the list, destined for greater things over the next 12 months. 

More … Footprint in the SW Top 100

Broadcast has asked Footprint to write a column on sustainable production.

It’s a chance to share a bit of what we think and do, in the office and on location. There are four steps to take to move more towards sustainable production. So switch off that bank of monitors, pour yourself a fairtrade tea and read what we had to say.    

More … The Footprint column

It began for us in the summer of 2003. We were living in a small but perfectly formed flat in Olympia, described by the estate agents as one of the most fashionable parts of Kensington. This is the sort of social status nonsense Slowing Down With The Joneses is on about. By day we were making TV programmes and by night enjoying the delights London has to offer, as a result spending more money on Rennies than rent. But thoughts of starting a family, working for ourselves and buying a home started to appeal more than being in the capital, so we upped-sticks and headed west, to the West Country, thinking the grass is always greener. And guess what? We think it is. Just passed Reading England starts to get greener, and greener.

We got as far as Bristol and settled down. We bought a place up on the Avon Gorge with fantastic views - the gorge, the river, ancient forest, fantastic skies and sunsets, wildlife, nature, Wales. You could see the snow on the mountains in winter. This was our new home. We restored it and loved it. Our boy took his first steps here and kicked his first ball in the garden.

I used to travel back to London for meetings sometimes. It looked and felt amazing; the buildings, the parks, the shops, the bars, the people. But each time I got back home, to the peace and the nature, the smell of the grass and the flowers on warm nights, London was just a memory.

Having enjoyed the move west so much, in summer 2008 we pushed on a bit further, to Chew Magna (eight miles south, heading into Somerset). It’s the greenest parish in Britain. This is Chew Valley Lake, a mile down the lane. A view like this (which is free) is enough to make some people ‘green’ with envy.

But don’t be fooled. Slowing down is the complete opposite of keeping up. There’s no race to be the slowest. No sliding scale of greenness. Slowing Down With The Joneses is for everyone who is happy to swap a bit more time for a bit less money, spend more time with family and friends, work for themselves, doing creative, interesting stuff, relax a bit more, love and laugh a bit more and go to bed happy.

Each month in Slowing Down With The Joneses we’ll let you know what life is like when you slow down, at home, at work and at play.

So, as we set out on this new journey, join us in taking one big deep breath, breathing out, feeling better and slowing down. The economy is, why don’t you?

There are 562,400 Joneses in the UK. That’s just 1% of the population (we’re almost a minority), but our influence on modern life in Old Blighty is colossal. Life is so fast moving, so status-led, because the other 99% of you are busy racing around, trying to keep up with us.

It’s been going on for nearly 100 years, first in America.

The saying goes back to Mr Pembroke Jones, a shipping and railway industrialist from the early twentieth century. Jones was a leader in both New York and Newport social circles, and well known for hosting lavish parties. This was Pembroke’s place along the Newport Mansions, the Rhode Island playground made famous by The Great Gatsby.

The saying first appeared in print in 1916, in a cartoon strip called ‘Keeping Up With The Joneses’ in The New York World; the creation of American cartoonist Arthur “Pop” Momand. The “Joneses” lived next door to the cartoon’s main characters, and were spoken of but never seen. And so it began; man’s desire to be seen as being as good as his neighbour or contemporaries, using social caste or the accumulation of material goods as the benchmark. To fail to “keep up with the Joneses” is to be socio-economically or culturally inferior. I’m not saying a word.

But where has all this racing around, all this ‘keeping up’ got us?

Is the desire to increase our social ranking behind much of the social mobility we’ve seen recently? (paid for on credit, not salary we now know). Or is it why so many people are just burnt out and unhappy, hitting the bottle or the treadmill, as the credit crunch bites their corporate arses? I dunno. What do you think?

Given us Joneses have such a vital role to play in society, setting the benchmark and the pace, we’ve decided to take the lead, to start taking life a bit more easy, to slow down. It’s the least we can do. Which is how we like it. Welcome to Slowing Down With The Joneses. Living life in the slow lane, watching the day go by.

I was having a coffee with a friend yesterday, when he looked me in the eye and said “Ok, so how do you make greener films?” As a film maker himself, he was throwing down the green gauntlet. And fair enough. There’s plenty of greenwash going on. My friend lives next door to the man who started The Soil Association, and knows his onions. I gave one example. Footprint was asked to make a short online film about a Master Cheesemaker, who lives on his farm near Stroud.

The cheesemaker uses milk from his own herds, and revives recipes dating back to the 16th Century, and it’s delicious. When we put our film crew together, we looked, as ever, for a cameraman of real quality, living as close to the location as we could find. Our research produced a real gem; Mike Fox, described as the Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal of documentary filming, living just three miles from the entrance to the farm. After a chat on the phone about the job, and The Grateful Dead - I was listening to American Beauty when Mike called - we booked him for the job, saving the cost and the carbon of bringing a crew up from London or Bristol. It’s was all good. Until a few weeks later when Mike called back, to complain. He’d become addicted to the cheese, and had spent more money on Single Gloucester than we’d paid him in fees. That’s the way it crumbles; you can’t beat great local food. Making greener films often involves taking small steps like this to be greener, but it’s a start and it’s easy to do. All this took was a bit of research time. More … Footprint’s sustainability.