On Sunday 23rd February, we welcomed a record number of students, members and Industry Partners (our newly renamed ‘Sustaining Members’ category) to the NFTS for the AMPS 2025 AGM/EGM.

The atmosphere was buzzing and amazingly warm (as was the room temperature) as people from all around the country caught up with friends old and new, and had a chance to spend time finding out about the exciting product launches and developments our partners had travelled to tell us about.

And of course there was our AGM/EGM in the beautiful NFTS theatre, and summary of everything AMPS have been up to - hosted by our fabulous chairperson of the past 4 years, Andrew Wilson.

Starting with the EGM, a vote brought in to change elements of our constitution covering our member categories.  After much discussion, we have decided to combine our Student and Supplementary categories in to one, named ‘Foundation Members’ - meaning that once a student has graduated, they automatically remain a member and have no requirements to find sponsors to stay with us.  With this change, we hope that we can encourage a wider network of new graduates finding their way in the industry, benefiting them, our current members and the association.

We also renamed our Sustaining Members category as ‘Partner Members; (or just Partners) subdividing this in to two groups – Industry partners and Academic Partners.  This name more accurately defines the Association’s relationship with our corporate and academic supporters, and recognises the different needs of these two sectors.  All changes were voted in unanimously with both proxy votes and old-fashioned hands in the air from those who attended.

Once the officialness was over, we got on with discussing all of the exciting things that have been happening over the past year.  Andrew’s report covered everything from our incredible Podcast series and Film Awards success - when we yet again predicted the BAFTA and OSCAR winner in Dune: Part Two, to our ever popular events and socials, and the huge lift in our social media engagement.  He welcomed our new council members, and took time to remember friends and colleagues we have lost over the past 12 months. We then heard from a number of representatives from our council who have spent the year working for the rights, opportunities and benefits of our members and the wider Motion Picture Sound community.

We heard from Membership Secretary Susan Pennington who spoke about the surge in membership applications since our Mentorship Programme was announced, and Martyn Harries gave us an overview of the exciting number of Industry and Education Partners who have joined us, keen to engage with our network.  He also gave us a rundown of our Podcast Series successes, with listeners to our recent Dune Part 2 episode featuring Re-Recording Mixer Ron Bartlett and Production Sound Mixer Gareth John gaining over 100 listens in one day after we celebrated their AMPS and BAFTA wins on social media.  

The Podcast reach since it began is over 50 countries with as many listeners in the USA as we have in the UK.  We heard from Treasurer Paul Paragon who gave us a summary of our spend and income from sponsors and membership fees over the past year, and Rosanna Prada who presented a number of exciting slides and statistics showing how engagement with our website and social media has increased over the past six months - with the help of our PR and Marketing whizz Cathy Anderson and her team who have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of AMPS’ mission and the craft of sound around the wider industry.

Lastly, we were incredibly excited to announce our new initiative ‘AMPLIFY’ which has been launched off the back of the Change Report we had commissioned in 2021, which highlighted issues such as Access and DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) in the association and the wider industry.  This was headed up by committee leaders Nina Hartstone and Louise Burton, who are incredibly passionate about improving representation across all areas of sound.  We feel that the industry would be a more creative and relaxed space if we were able to reflect the diversity of the world at large, and create flexible and inclusive working environments for the benefit of everyone.  Amplify are also passionate about bringing change to an industry where the craft of sound is often low down on the list of priorities, and currently it is incredibly hard to hire a diverse sound team from Heads of Department down to traineeships in both Production and Post Production.  As a result of this, we were unable to find any data on the make up of the Sound for Motion Picture industry as a whole.  We want to help change this and give sound the respect that it deserves. 

We know there is a lot of work to do and no immediate fix, but we hope that with AMPS’ collaborations with BECTU, Screenskills, Reframe and UK Screen Alliance to name but a few, we can introduce a more diverse generation to this fabulous industry that we are all so passionate about, and support each other to create a fairer and more inclusive environment.  We won’t be able to achieve this without the help of each and every one of you, so please get in touch if you have any thoughts or ideas or have the time to help us in any way.  Amplify@amps.net

After our summary of AMPS’ 2024 we headed back to the reception area, where a number of very excited and beautiful K9s from ‘Hearing Dogs for the Deaf’ had appeared to say thank you to us for having them as our chosen charity.  We were honoured to present them with a cheque for £3000 this year after the generosity of our AMPS members at our Awards Event in Greenwich raffle in April, and from the auction that followed where we sold off some amazing goodies that were donated after the event.

We then carried on the mingling over a couple of pints and a buffet lunch. 

It really was a great day.

Thanks all for coming!