Dawn Shadforth graduated from a Fine Art degree at Sheffield University in 1991. She earned a first in sculpture, and has since become one of most successful music video and commercial directors of her generation.  Dawn’s directorial career began with documentaries for Channel 4 (1995’s The Friend’s Tale) and Warp Records (The Seven Year Glitch in 1996).  In 1996 she made her first video, for Mantronix ‘Hush’ for the princely sum of £50, and a year later she signed to RSA/Black Dog.

From the start of her career her work has gained industry recognition. In 1999 she was one of 30 chosen out of 500 directors to participate in the “Saatchi and Saatchi New Directors Showcase” at the Cannes Advertising Festival.  Ranked by the Observer Magazine as one of ten directors to watch in 2001 Dawn was also notably selected as one of the creative futures for 2000 by Creative Review Magazine.

Since then she has built a huge back catalogue of instantly identifiable classics and popular mainstream hits like Kylie Minogue’s career defining “Spinning Around”, Renalt Megane’s omnipresent “Shaking That Arse” and Mark’s & Spencer’s crowd pleasing Shirley Bassey “Christmas” commercial.   At the same time Dawn has also continued to experiment with narrative and push the form of music video with conceptual performance works for the likes of Bjork, to modern horror enigma for The Streets, and Primal Scream’s award-soaked gothic cartoon fantasy “Miss Lucifer”.

Her work is known for its visual flair, sex appeal and tongue in cheek humour. Dawn has worked with a huge range of artists, from Bjork to Oasis, and Iggy Pop to Shirley Bassey, Kate Moss to Antonio Banderas.  She has created commercials for the likes of Nike, Marks and Spencer, H&M, Lacoste, Renault, Toyota, Halifax, Rimmel, and Dulux.

In 2001 Dawn’s second of five video’s for Kylie Minogue, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”, became a world wide smash and the video has since been cited as being one of pop music’s most iconic moments.  It’s atypical cultural significance for a pop video has been widely acknowledged.    Journalist and pundit Paul Morley used the video as a template for his analysis of modern pop music “Words And Music: A History Of Pop In The Shape Of A City”.   It is also possible to study the video, as a part of a media degree at the University of Lisbon.

Over the course of her career her work has earned a glut of awards.  She has also been the subject of one of the coveted “Mirrorball” documentaries on Channel Four.  Dawn has four times had retrospectives of her work play at festivals, at Mirrorball at the Edinborough Film Festival, the London Dance on Film Festival, OnedotZero and more recently a full retrospective at international Music video festival Festival Du Clip, France 2007.

Dawn now has various film projects in development.