Alby is the founding CEO and Creative Director of Dramatic Encounters and is currently building his team and slate of projects.

Committed to achieving true diversity, equity and inclusion of all marginalised communities in the industry, he devotes much of his time to improving this situation through developing and producing work by individuals from these groups to break the stereotyping of their lives and to provide a better variety of content and story worlds for audiences. He is currently developing two drama series commissioned by the BBC and a few other series drama and features for the UK and some international co-productions.

Initially a theatre director for 15 years, during which he was the successful artistic director of Temba Theatre Company for 9 years, he moved into film and broadcasting with the encouragement of the BBC in the early 90s. Both training as a producer and director with the BBC and working in these roles and through being a member of the BBC General Advisory Council for 4 years from 1986, he formed a wide understanding of broadcasting and operational issues. He also developed his directorial and dramaturgical skills for a visual and audio media in this time.

Then, through being invited to work in South Africa in 1996 as a producer and trainer for a series of dramas for national broadcaster, the SABC, the success of this enterprise led to him being invited by SABC management to address a wider brief for the broadcaster that was endeavouring to emerge from the apartheid practices of the previous regime. With the authority of the Director of Programmes, Mandla Langa, he was promoted to change manager in the director of programmes office to transform the national broadcaster’s practices to be based on equality for all races. The change programme required improving opportunities for individuals from the formerly disadvantaged and excluded communities to acquire commissioning editor skills and for emerging black producers to win commissions. This necessitated working with commissioning teams, channel managers and others in the broadcaster, as well as with representatives of indie producers, to revise the commissioning procedures and to change the culture of the broadcaster as well as establishing quality control mechanisms, such as annual programme reviews for all genre groups and channels.

Later, through working with a new industry body called the National Film & Video Foundation, he was able to assist the wider transformation of the industry that enabled many more from under-represented groups to receive opportunities for entering the industry through new training programmes and development labs in the SEDIBA training programme. He also established the practice of writers’ rooms to enable creative teams and commissioning teams to create great series quickly.

To this end, he has developed many new series dramas for the SABC. The majority of these projects completed the development process and went into production and then produced high audience numbers when broadcast, the best of which continue to achieve record audience numbers on repeats. He has also produced a number of films by black filmmakers. His latest series is FIFTY, which was developed for Nigerian broadcaster, Ebony Life TV and is now on Netflix. 

Alby is a member of industry bodies BAFTA, PACT and the European Film Academy and is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Television Society. He is currently also chairing the Independent Equity Committee of the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, which is tasked with supporting the process of transformation in the school in the interests of achieving diversity, equity and inclusion.