Andy Spitz is a documentary film Producer and Director focusing on social justice, historical, political, environmental and gender issues. She also works as a freelance Senior Social Consultant undertaking socio-economic impact assessments, livelihood analyses, stakeholder engagement, management plan development, risk assessments and managing social teams. In 2008 Andy directed the film “Angels on our shoulders” which focussed on the impact that xenophobic violence had on a number of children – both migrant and South African. This film also premiered in Berlin and has shown in several countries as well as having its main screening in the refugee safety camp in which it was filmed. In 2011 the film won the audience award for the African Arts Institute Film Festival.
Since 1997 Andy’s work has included projects in South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia Zambia, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Iran and Sweden and has researched the impacts that various developments would have on local communities in the project areas in these countries. Her work focuses on participatory processes through which to understand communities and interest groups and involves behaviour mapping, special interest focus groups, story-telling, and observation. Key to the process is exploring effective and accessible processes through which to feed the processed information back to affected communities to enable them to respond to potential developments as they see fit. This approach emphasises the use of video and visual tools (e.g. maps, photographs, drawings).