09 August 2011
Posted in
General
A report by Jayne Kirkham, the Writers' Guild of Great Britain's children’s representative
Last month I attended the ever growing Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield. Three days of debate, training, and socialising for professionals from right across the children’s media landscape: players from traditional TV, online, games and books gathered in Sheffield. It’s billed as 'Everything you need to know about the business of creativity in kids’ content, and everyone you need to meet in one place at one time.' So it was good to see a number of Guild members there (and it would be interesting to hear their perspectives).
The theme for this year’s event was 'Think Differently' with the opening speech by Lord Puttnam of Queensgate CBE, challenging delegates to do just that – he said that the days when creators of moving images assumed they had exclusive control over content are gone forever, that the pronouncements of critics matter less than the users of Facebook and Twitter and that the old financial arguments of levies and tax relief in a time of hardship are no good when Exchequer funding is in short supply.
He talked about us needing to re-engage the younger generation and to think differently about education. He talked about students digitally mashing war poets, 60s protest songs and clips from Saving Private Ryan for example to explore war, and said that it is ridiculous that we saddle ourselves with a legal system that makes it impossible for schools to be as inventive as their students in their teaching. He added however that hand in glove with the right to sail digital seas, come a whole wealth of responsibilities – 'do as you would be done by and respect creator rights'.
The rest of the conference continued the theme of Thinking Differently, looking at finding new ways of meeting the media needs of young people and there were some superb examples of innovative projects that are finding success. Moshi Monsters is a case in point, an online game with a strong public service ethos at its heart that is bulldozing (you couldn’t find a rake big enough) in the cash.
Details of every session at the Conference, all the speeches, debates and even the parties can be found on the Children's Media Conference blog: In the final session came the announcement that after five years, Save Kids’ TV is merging with the Children’s Film and Television Foundation to form a new group, The Children’s Media Foundation. Joining together gives us both a bigger voice and means that we will no longer focus primarily on lobbying for TV but can launch a broader media campaign. Initially the board of this new not-for-profit organisation will comprise Anna Home OBE as chair, Children’s Media Conference editorial director Greg Childs, Children’s Film and Television Foundation chairman Linda James and Zodiak Family and Kids’ boss Nigel Pickard.
Many of the Foundation’s endeavours will be in research, partnering with academics, so that rather than fire-fighting media hyped panics the Foundation will be the voice of measured response. But as Lord Puttnam said, crises in UK media, such as the News of the World phone hacking scandal, and some major reviews underway or on the horizon (Lord Smith’s Film Review, the monitoring of the Bailey Report, and the Communications Bill), mean that now is the perfect time to lobby the Government for change. The Children’s Media Foundation will be seeking to influence the terms of reference for the Communications Bill so that the needs of children are very much part of the agenda. Now that will be ‘thinking differently’.
