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.
The Children's Media Yearbook 2022 is packed with articles and research reflecting on the past year in children's media and the future of kids' and youth content. You can order a print copy for £12.50 or download a digital version for £10.
The Young Audiences Content Fund was closed by Secretary of State Nadine Dorries in an announcement linked to the licence fee settlement for The BBC, made in January 2022.
CMF convened a campaign group of industry bodies, children's media professionals, academics and creatives who called for a stay of execution. Add your signature to the 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. And there's some evidence that the government will act, over time, on the representations they have received.
CMF will keep up the pressure for a replacement for the Fund.
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.
You can also read a summary of Dubit's State of the Nation's Kids research conducted in partnership with CMF.
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.
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.
"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,