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Interview with Lord David Puttnam
16 February, 2010 
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LORD DAVID PUTTNAM is an Oscar and BAFTA award-winning film producer. He also sits on the Labour benches in the House of Lords.
Lord Puttnam was chairman of the National Film and Television School for 10 years and taught people such as Nick Park. He founded Skillset, which trains young people to become members of the film and television industries. In 2002 he was elected UK president of Unicef.
Lord Puttnam was the first chancellor of the University of Sunderland from 1997 until 13 July 2007. He was appointed an Honorary Doctor of Education during the School of Education and Lifelong Learning's Academic Awards Ceremonies in his final week as Chancellor and was granted the Freedom of the City of Sunderland upon his retirement.
In 1998 he founded the National Teaching Awards and became its first chairman. He was the founding chairman of the General Teaching Council 2000-2002. He was appointed as chancellor of the Open University in 2006. He was also the Chairman of NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) from 1998 until 2003. He is also chairman of Futurelab.