Media Advocacy for UK Children and Young People

Young Audiences Content Fund Campaign

The Young Audiences Content Fund has been shut down after its three-year pilot. CMF is coordinating a campaign coalition fighting for a reprieve.

Sign the Campaign Open Letter

YAC Fund - the Facts

Campaign Coalition members discuss the value of the YAC Fund and how to support the campaign in this podcast.

 

Podcast

Sign up in Support

Public Service Media Report

Explore the CMF multi-authored Report: Our Children's Future: Does Public Service Media Matter?

About the PSM Report

Report Articles

What now? What next? What if...?

CMF Director Greg Childs on the Public Service Media Report themes and possible futures.

Greg's Article

Report Articles

CMF - Listening to Kids

The Children's Media Foundation's Public Service Media Campaign moves into a new phase - Listening to Kids.

Listening to Kids - Young Voices on Media Choices (27 April 2022) was the first of a series of events in which the voices of young people will inform the debate on how public service media might be funded and delivered in the future - and in ways that are meaningful for the young.

Creative agency Kids Know Best talked to young people about their media choices. And contributors to the CMF Public Service Media Report, Japhet Asher, Warren Nettleford and Dr Jane O’Connor discussed their ideas.

Watch the event in full

You can also read the summary of Dubit's State of the Nation's Kids research conducted in partnership with CMF.

Young Audiences Fund to Close

The Young Audiences Content Fund has closed.  The announcement that the Fund would not continue beyond its three year pilot came from Secretary of State Nadine Dorries in January 2022.   CMF immediately wrote to the Secretary of State asking her to reconsider. Read the CMF reaction.

By February CMF convened a campaign group of industry bodies, children's media professionals, academics and creatives who repeated the call for a stay of execution.  Add your name to the Campaign's open letter to Nadine Dorries.

The Fund as been an undoubted success. It supported 55 productions in its first two years - with more to follow in year 3 - and it financed 144 development projects, significantly extending the range of public service content available to kids and teens. It contributed to the government's "levelling up" agenda, with inclusivity, regional production and vital support for Welsh and other UK languages written into its DNA.

The campaign has generated significant political support including questions in both Houses of Parliament and at Select Committee hearings. CMF met DCMS Media and Creative Industries Minister Julia Lopez in April to explain why continuation of the Fund is vital for the health of the UK children's media industry - and for UK kids. You can read news of that meeting here.

Show Me The Money - Watch on YouTube

17th November 2021 
The first in CMF's series of public discussions on the future of public service content for children and young people. Focusing on the sources of and potential new ways of thinking about funding for public service content, this event was an important introduction to the financial challenges ahead and how future funding plans could play out. Watch the event in full.

Our Children's Future - CMF Public Service Report

The Children's Media Foundation has published a comprehensive, multi-authored report into the future of public service content for children and young people, in response to the failure of Ofcom and the DCMS to significantly address the younger audience when considering public service futures.

The report is free to download. Articles are also available separately on our special web pages.

Links to consultations and inquiries on the future off public service media and our responses can be seen on our campaign pages.

Children's Media Yearbook

The Children's Media Yearbook 2021 is a digital-only publication available to download for just £10

It's packed with articles and research reflecting on the past year in children's media and the future of kids' and youth content.

"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,