BAFTA Kids in 2018

PRESENT & CORRECT

What did you do for your ninth birthday? Chances are you can’t remember. But one young lad who will never forget his ninth is Braydon, the second winner of BAFTA’s annual Young Presenter competition: he spent his birthday in the presence of HRH The Duke of Cambridge at a special BAFTA fundraising event, where he not only met BAFTA’s royal president but also interviewed actor Tom Hiddleston and presenter Dermot O’Leary for our BAFTA Kids channel. Quite a night, but one that Braydon handled with supreme alacrity, showing a maturity beyond his years – no wonder that he’s recently been signed to an agency and is now reporting for Sky Kids’ new show FYI.

“I’ve had a brilliant time with BAFTA Kids since winning in 2017,” Braydon said. “I’ve met lots of great people... I still get very nervous but this has been an amazing experience and I would recommend it to anyone.”

Tianna, the inaugural winner of the competition in 2016, has also been busy, co-hosting a number of events for the charity Action for Children’s Arts. Tianna, Braydon and 2017 runner-ups Harrison, Jess, Kade and Olly have fronted many of our BAFTA Kids’ children’s media preview events and reports for our YouTube channel and baftakids.org throughout 2018. We’ve held more previews than ever before this year, including showcases for Katy, Jamie Johnson, Joe All Alone, Free Rein, Apple & Onion, Cartoon Network’s 25th anniversary (in October) and many more.

This year’s Young Presenter competition was a little different: Warner Bros’ Twenty Twenty Productions filmed the final casting session for ITV’s The Big Audition, a brand new factual entertainment series that goes behind the scenes of the casting world. If you were among the 1.5 million viewers who tuned into the episode on 26 October, you will have seen 13-year-old Daniel, from Chesterfield, join Tianna and Braydon as a winner of the competition.

You may have met Daniel on the red carpet outside, but if not he will be co-presenting an award this evening as part of his prize. He’s already had his first taster of what’s to come as the competition’s latest winner, interviewing Richard Madely, Judy Finnigan and Alan Carr at BAFTA’s special tribute event for This Morning, as well as visiting the sets of Scrambled and the BAFTAnominated So Awkward.

“It still hasn’t sunk in that I’ve won,” says Daniel. “I’m just an ordinary kid. I never expected to have this amazing opportunity. I am looking forward to going behind the scenes of TV shows and finding out what happens off camera and what it takes to make a television programme. I’d like to meet lots of interesting people: not just the celebrities but all the people behind the scenes, too.”

Much like the introduction of the new Young Performer category at this year’s Awards, the Young Presenter competition plays a key part in BAFTA’s engagement with children and young people, giving them the chance to take a deeper interest in how their favourite films, games and television shows are made. Ofcom research published in November 2017 underlined how vital it is to provide similarly aged role models for child viewers, reporting that more than half of 12 t0 15-year-olds (53 per cent) thought it was important to watch programmes that included people their age.

BAFTA’s activities include the aforementioned previews, the Young Game Designers (YGD) competition, events (including our hugely popular roadshows), hospice screenings and more. They allow us to enthuse young minds through providing unique access to award-winning talent and programming, inspiring them to consider a role in our industries in the future.

Two events in 2018 particularly stand out. First, for the second year running, 1,000 school children descended on London’s Alexandra Palace in June for a full day of fun-packed activities, which included special masterclasses, music, stunts, live discussions and competitions to explore the various creative roles within children’s media. The event was hosted by Lindsey Russell (Blue Peter), Ed Petrie (All Over the Place) and Naomi Wilkinson (Naomi’s Nightmares of Nature) and featured a selection of industry professionals and BAFTA-winning talent sharing their knowledge and artistry.

Then, BAFTA Kids took over the Scottish Isle of Arran for a day in September. This bespoke event saw all seven primary schools on the island come together at the local high school for workshops and masterclasses, hosted by Lindsey Russell and Ben Shires (Official Amazing), with guest speaker Joshua Davidson (Night Zookeeper).

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention BAFTA Kids’ ongoing partnership with children’s mental health charity Place2Be. Now in its second year (and already extended into 2019), this partnership saw the BAFTA Kids Roadshow visit 12 schools supported by Place2Be all over the UK, from Ayrshire to Margate.

Working with Place2Be, we created a new competition for Children’s Mental Health Week in February with the theme of ‘Being Ourselves’ – while we may be similar to our family and friends, there are things that make us individual, too. The competition encouraged children to rejoice these differences by drawing a ‘selfie’ and writing a few lines about why it’s good to celebrate ‘being ourselves’. Twelve winners then had their selfies made into a stunning animated short by the BAFTA-winning studio Karrot Entertainment, creators of Sarah & Duck, which has played at all our BAFTA Kids Roadshows since. If you haven’t seen it yet, we highly recommend you watch it on YouTube (search: ‘Being Ourselves’) – it’s really rather wonderful.

It’s been a busy but rewarding year for BAFTA Kids, one that has seen us visit more places outside of the capital than ever before. If you would like to keep track of all our work supporting children’s media, then please sign up to our specially tailored Spotlight on Children’s Media newsletter. For more, visit: bit.ly/spotlightchildrens.

SUPPORTING THE INDUSTRY

BAFTA continues to work with the industry for the industry. For instance, our new writing competition with Rocliffe is a long-running initiative that aims to give a platform to undiscovered screenwriters and help them develop their careers.

We first introduced a Rocliffe writing competition for Children's Media in 2014, supported by the London Book Fair. However, in 2018, we added Young Adult (YA) to the entry criteria, so the competition officially celebrates writers of YA & Children's Media. We also partnered with Eastside Educational Trust on a pilot scheme to specifically identify and nurture writing talent from the under-20s. In September, we held a showcase of extracts from three new works: Casador by Jessica Lambert; Porth Lllwyd Episode 1: the Ogglesprott by Nicholas Davies & Brett Davies; and Siblings by 19-year-old Mohamed A M Osman. The latter has already been approached by a number of agents wanting to represent him.

The 2017 finalists took some big steps on their career path, too. Javid Rezai signed with an agent and received his first job on an existing series, writing for Hollyoaks. Maggie Bowler also signed with an agent and has an independent film company interested in optioning two of her scripts, including her BAFTA Rocliffe Showcase script. The third and last 2017 finalist, Rachel Murrell, has had her Showcase script, UpsideDown, optioned by BAFTA-winning Lion TV, with Sue Nott onboard as co-executive producer.

We are also supporting more established writers through BAFTA Elevate, now in its sophomore year after representing women directors in 2017 (which included Delyth Thomas, who is a named nominee in the Drama category at this year's Awards). Elevate is designed to support talented people from underrepresented groups progress in their careers, and to help tackle the issue of diversity in our industries as a whole. Several of this year's coterie have written for children's shows, including Emma Reeves, Janice Okoh and Karissa Hamilton-Bannis. All will take part in a bespoke 12-month programme of support, including networking opportunities, mentoring, tailored panel discussions, masterclasses and workshops focused on professional development.

In early July, BAFTA sponsored the Changemakers strand at the Children's Media Conference (CMC) for the second year. Two of the recipients of our learning and new talent initiatives represented BAFTA at the event: screenwriter Javid Rezai (BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Competition), and games artist Anna Hollinrake (BAFTA Breakthrough Brits). Rezai took the opportunity to discuss issues within the industry that he is passionate about, including LGBTQ+ representation in children's media. Hollinrake, meanwhile, spoke about the importance of maintaining good mental health at work.