My Development project began in 2006. An investigation of women’s engagement with the feature film development process in Aotearoa New Zealand, mostly in relation its public funding body, the New Zealand Film Commission, it brought together my long-established arts-and-gender-activism, my award-winning script-writing practice and academic imperatives in a Creative Writing PhD; my research later informed the New Zealand Film Commission’s decision to provide annual statistical data about gender. At the beginning – it seems amazing now – there was little accessible information so it was vital to work across geographical borders and to maintain a consistent global dialogue with activists, practitioners and academics through my Wellywood Woman blog – primarily for Anglophone women filmmakers – and related social media sites. Working across borders also provides a nourishing and necessary community of support and I’m ever-grateful to groups like F-Rated for that, for ‘being (t)here’.