The Media Advocacy Organisation for UK Children and Young People

CMF at CMC 2020 Online

The Children's Media Conference 2020 Online took place from 6-10 July. CMF provided session producers and speakers from our board and executive group and the CMC Opening Question Time with Russell T Davies, Baroness Kidron, Tracy Brabin MP, Ollie Bray and Charles Lauder, was produced by a CMF team.

Registered delegates can still view all the Conference content until the Online Platform closes on September 30th. Much of the Conference content will be made public after that date.

Children's Media Yearbook 2020 Goes Virtual

Because the Children's Media Conference will not take place in Sheffield in July 2020, the main outlet for printed versions of the Yearbook has been lost. It's been decided instead to publish the articles for the book on a monthly basis in the CMC blog.

APPG Back on Track

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Children's Media and the Arts re-established following the General Election

Every APPG has to re-form in a new Parliament. Jayne Kirkham, CMF's policy liaison officer, and clerk to the APPG on Children's Media and the Arts, moved swiftly to a general meeting in which Baroness Benjamin and Julie Elliott MP were elected joint chairs.  See Jayne's report.

Young Audiences Content Fund

After years of campaigning by CMF and others, the fund to create new public service content for children and young people has become a reality.  

The YACF which launched on April 1st 2019, will distribute approximately £57m of funding over the course of its three year pilot - for development and production of content from children and teens.

This is major success, after years of lobbying by CMF - first, to create awareness amongst politicians that a fund was needed, and then to ensure that the fund would dedicate its resources to the younger audience.  It provides new opportunities fo ruth commercial public service broadcasters to enhance their offering for young people, for producers to pitch more ideas, to innovate and widen the pool of content, and all of that is of major benefit to the UK children's and youth audience.

"Children, and the media they use, are frequent topics of public concern and debate. The Children's Media Foundation will stimulate and participate in this debate - across the entire range of media that children experience."

Sir Philip Pullman, Author and Lifetime Patron,