He attended St David's College, Llandudno where he excelled at sport and as managing director of the Young Enterprise company took it to the national finals.

In 2002 he was assistant director for The New Shakespeare Company's 2002 season at Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park working on Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It and Oh, What a Lovely War!

Working with ACT Productions in London's West End his final assistant director role was on August Strindberg's play The Dance of Death in 2003 with Ian McKellen, Frances de la Tour and Owen Teale.

For film features 23 international thinkers including Prof. Joseph Stiglitz, Prof Noam Chomsky, Gillian Tett, Ha-Joon Chang, Prof. Michael Hudson, Lawrence Wilkerson, Satish Kumar, Prof. Herman Daly and John Perkins.

Cinesthesiac said that Ashcroft "may be the first documentarist working in this field to elicit viable solutions from his interviewees, rather than baleful shrugs: you can't fail to emerge better informed, and better prepared to make the kinds of changes and perception shifts we need to make if we are to move forward from here.