Mr Chris Mearing

Chris joined Drama in September 1999 as a Trainee Technical Assistant and since then has developed his role over the years. He is now the Technical Services Manager for the department of Communications, Drama and Film (CDF) and he is tasked with day-to-day management, maintenance and development of all of department's technical infrastructure.

Using his 25 years of experience across all 3 creative disciplines, he is able to collaborate with academic staff and students and provide professional front line support and advice for their teaching and research needs, not just from a technical aspect but also in a creative manner as well. He provides bespoke 1-to-1 and group training for CDF's specialist hardware and software environments, media production equipment and internet-based collaborative tools when required. He consults with academic and support staff as well as undergraduate and post-graduate students on computer systems, media production equipment, collaborative tools, audio-visual systems, software environments and develops policy and procedures. He designs, installs, maintains, and supports all of CDF’s practical & technical facilities.

He collaborates with academics on international projects. Providing and carrying out technical and creative ideas and solutions that impact on the success of these projects.

He manages and maintains ‘The Exeter Digital Archives’, which are CDF’s online multimedia archives containing 1000s of hours of Drama and Theatre specific content that has been collected over the past 4 decades. All of which has been digitised and can be streamed on demand from Drama's servers. This resource is in the process of being migrated to Vimeo so that this resource can be shared with a wider audience.

He is extremely passionate about Creative Technologies and continuously pushes for their development, so that the CDF's resources are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. 

Chris manages the CDF Technical office at Thornlea, which has an open-door policy. Meaning that if anyone has a question, a problem or any other issue, they are free to come and speak to a member of the Technical Team about it. The Technical Team will respond to this query immediately and resolve the issue if possible. The Technical Team take great pride in being able to provide their 'Customers' with this service.