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Alex Ashcroft

Senior Lecturer

Alex Ashcroft is a sound engineer and educator with extensive experience across audio disciplines including; location recording and post-production sound for film & broadcast, live music sound engineering and theatre sound mixing. His research centres around immersive sound design.

Alex began his career as a studio recording and live sound engineer, subsequently running “Equal Voices”, an inclusive youth citizenship programme developed by the Campaign for Racial Equality, running musical performance and recording workshops and events across Scotland.

As a production sound engineer, Alex has worked with directors including Ken Loach, Michael Radford and Leslie Manning. In 2021, his work with Shola Amoo, director of the narrative feature-film, “The Last Tree” (Nominated for the Sundance 2019, Grand Jury Prize in World Cinema and distributed by Picture House in the UK), gained him a BAFTA Cymru nomination for Best Sound. He has most recently worked with director, Dylan Williams (Men who Swim), on the feature documentary "Men Who Sing", which premiered at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival and was broadcast by the BBC, and as Re-recording mixer with director, Johan Carlsen on the film "Death on the Streets", which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

As a stage sound engineer, Alex has worked as Senior Touring engineer with the Royal Shakespeare Company and as Head of Sound / Sound Specialist with Cirque Du Soleil on a number of their international touring productions. His collaborations with visual artists include Rosalind Nashashibi, Lenka Clayton and El Anatsui.

Alex is a graduate of the National Film and Television School and The Northern Film School. He is also an alumnus of the Banff Centre for the Arts Audio Engineering Practicum residency where he researched studio and location-based surround sound recording methods, working with Grammy Award-winning mentor, David Gleeson (Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Fight Club).

Projects Alex has worked on have been screened and exhibited widely, including BBC, Channel 4, MTV, Venice Biennale, Cannes, Sundance, The Guggenheim Museum & MoMA.

Alex is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and the Audio Engineering Society (AES).

Current Teaching

Making Stories
Specialist Workshops 1
Specialist Workshops 3
Specialist Workshops 4
Documentary Film

Research Interests

Alex’s research interests centre around developments in immersive and surround sound technology and their impact on the aesthetic considerations of sound design. Taking into consideration the semiotic aspect of how sound is perceived, his research asks the question, with the widespread adoption of surround and immersive technologies in audio-visual media delivery, how are sound design aesthetics engaging with the dimensional expansion of the audio canvas?

Leeds School of Arts

Selected Outputs

Finzi Pasca D; Leduc P; Bonzanigo M; Côté J-F; Hewett R. (2014) Corteo. 22 February 2014 - 30 September 2014. South American Tour: Cirque du Soleil.
Champagne D; Corradi V. (2009) Varekai. 30 November 2009 - 11 January 2009. Madrid: Cirque du Soleil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varekai
Alberg M. (2009) Days of Significance. 27 October 2009 - 28 November 2009. UK Tour: Royal Shakespeare Company.

http://collections.shakespeare.org.uk/search/rsc-performances/das200910-days-of-significance
Honeyman J. (2009) The Tempest. 19 March 2009 - 25 April 2009. UK Tour: Royal Shakespeare Company.

http://collections.shakespeare.org.uk/search/rsc-performances/the-tempest-3469/view_as/grid/search/everywhere:the-tempest-8260/page/2
Hunter K. (2009) Othello. 30 January 2009 - 7 March 2018. UK Tour: Royal Shakespeare Company.

http://collections.shakespeare.org.uk/search/rsc-performances/oth200901-othello
Bartlett N. (2008) Romeo and Juliet. 23 October 2008 - 22 November 2018. UK Tour: Royal Shakespere Company.

http://collections.shakespeare.org.uk/search/rsc-performances/rom200810-romeo-and-juliet/search/play_title:romeo-and-juliet-3276/view_as/list/page/5
Laliberté G; Vignola N; Corradi V. (2008) Zaia. 18 May 2008 - 30 June 2008. Macau: Cirque du Soleil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaia
Dragone F; Dupéré R. (2007) Alegria. 12 March 2007 - 14 March 2008. Worldwide tour: Cirque du Soleil.

https://www.cirquedusoleil.com/alegria