John Farrington

John Farrington was brought up and educated in the UK before moving to the US in 1996. In 2001 he met Jane Goodall DBE Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Inspired by this chance meeting John travelled with his six-year old son to Kosovo to work with ethnic Serb and Albanian children on a peace project in Mitrovica - the 'Divided City'. In 2004, and just days after the Asian tsunami, John travelled to Khao Lak in the centre of the disaster zone in Thailand, and with a camera loaned to him by the BBC he documented his efforts that led him to presenting the Royal Television Society nominated documentary 'After the Wave'. He spent most of 2005 travelling between Khao Lak and Manchester continuing to raise funds to directly assist those whose lives were affected by the disaster. To see clips from the BBC documentary you can view the video above. In 2006 John founded Human First, and with a team of friends and supporters established the UK's primary official and public observation of International Peace Day, and made a film of it. The organisation enabled thousands of young people to consider and voice 'what peace means to me' by developing art workshops through its unique 'Human First' project - the first to be awarded the coveted Inspired by London 2012 mark. Human First developed strong links with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the United Nations and remarkable individuals such as Lord Bates (who walked over 3000 miles to promote the ideals of the Olympic Truce). Continually inspired by the work of Jane Goodall, John has focused his experiences and recently established The Human First Film Project which aims to enable young people to find solutions to the age-old problems of conflict, intolerance and hate. He recently also founded Leaky Shed Films. Please click on the links below for more information. His first feature And She Cried was screened at the Odeon Cinemas and he is currently developing his next film Two Souls.