Showcomotion Conference
By Jayne Kirkham
The sixth annual Showcomotion Conference took place from the 1st to 3rd July at the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield. Over 460 delegates and 100 speakers from every sector of children’s media (T.V., radio, toys, interactive media, licensing, publishing, marketing, research and academia) explored the creative, business and strategic issues facing the industry.
After the recent years of gloom, especially in children’s television, the conference theme of 'Connect' gave a cautious and practical optimism as it offered bespoke research connecting practitioners with their audience and also with each other as the benefits of cross-discipline learning and partnership became clear.
While there are reports on all sessions at showcomotionconference.com, two sessions will be of special interest to Guild members.
‘Digital Britain – Does it Include the Kids?’ was a lengthy six-speaker debate that focussed on the Digital Britain White Paper and the conclusions made within it regarding changing Channel 4’s remit to include older children, and the contentious subject of contestable funding and where the money should come from.
It was generally agreed that topslicing the BBC was a bad idea. While the Digital Switchover money is not in fact part of the BBC’s general fund, and so not topslicing, it was still met with suspicion as being the ‘thin end of the wedge’ in terms of BBC funding cuts.
It was agreed that other sources of funding should be further explored: levies and cultural tax breaks. This led to some startling revelations about the state of animation in England by Oli Hyatt. He gave a frank account of the uneven playing field with other countries (including Wales which enjoys public subsidy) that is killing the industry in England.
The speakers, who included Anthony Lilley from Ofcom’s content board and Stephen Pearse from the NUJ/Federation Entertainment Unions and Anna Home from SKTV, agreed that we had done well to get children’s media well and truly onto the political agenda but there is still work to do.
However, it was also felt that there mustn’t be a reliance on nostalgia in the face of the digital revolution and that proactive co-operation and innovation is the only way to approach it.
The second session of interest to writers was called 'Writers, who needs them?' With such an emphasis throughout the conference on new media, it could have spread fear into writers afraid of getting left out of the loop.
WGGB Award winner Tony Collingwood moderated a session in which Maurice Suckling acted as a real example of the virtues of versatility as he spoke of his roles in game production and working in television.
Sean Coleman and Tim Compton spoke at length about their involvement in creating exciting popular content for social networking sites. Sean’s MSN hit Kirill combined traditional TV with digital media such as blogs with user comments that became an integral part of the audience’s understanding of the programme. Tim suggested that writers should be excited by the opportunities in new media but warned that writers must understand why a young person chooses to go on a social networking site, the tone and demographic of Bebo as opposed to MySpace for example, in order not to be seen as invasive.
Sean also allayed fears that new media was just a young person’s industry. It is still the idea that matters not one’s age. And the revelation that writers on Kirill were paid as much as the actors came as a pleasant surprise for many.
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