The Document Festival was founded in 2003 by co-ordinators Mona Rai and Paula Larkin. A collaboration with SpiritAid and Variant magazine, Document 1 was created in response to the discrimination faced by asylum seekers and refugees in Glasgow. It was intended to challenge negative media attitudes by providing factually correct social context through the films it screened. Since then, Document has brought more than 500 films on a vast range of themes to audiences in Glasgow and beyond.

We’re a largely voluntary-run organisation. Our key activities are sourcing and screening human rights documentaries and developing relationships with filmmakers and human rights organisations at home and abroad – this includes: raising funds, sponsorship and in-kind support for the festival, coordinating the main festival event itself, key note speakers, panel discussions, workshops and associated photographic and music events. In June 2007 we became a public company limited by guarantee, registered in Scotland SC157797.