On November 19, at the Allstream Centre at Exhibition Place in Toronto, CYM 2009 conference-goers got together to talk about the production of Canadian children and youth content.
Thanks to the financial support of CBC Television, keynote speaker Anna Home, from the UK organization Save Kids’ TV, started off the day addressing the challenges of producing children’s content in a context of declining advertising revenues and shifting regulations (Ofcom). She described an innovative proposal her organization recently submitted to the British Department for Culture, Media and Sport calling for the creation of an alternative public service provider for kids’ content.
We also had the exceptional fortune of hearing Tel Aviv University’s Dafna Lemish talk about how the characters in youth productions worldwide are a far cry from reality in terms of body proportions, gender and ethnic origin.
Maya Goetz, a renowned specialist in early childhood education, gave a unique workshop titled “Everything You Need to Know About Preschoolers.” Based on practical examples of formative research and clips of children watching television, the one-day workshop gave participants an opportunity to widen their knowledge of preschoolers and better understand how to reach this young audience.
In the afternoon, there was a hands-on session with the project GoeFreakZ, designed to help participants develop multiplatform content for children. Chris Gudgeon of Cci Entertainment got advice from a number of experts who helped create Bliki, a Bell Fund tool showing how to make money with multiplatform digital media. A very inspirational panel!
Also on the program, thanks to the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage, was a pitching clinic given by Jan Miller. The goal of the workshop was to help as many producers as possible improve their pitching skills with an eye to presenting their projects at the KidScreen Summit in February 2010.
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the event’s sponsors: CBC, Independent Production Fund, Shaw Rocket Fund, Canadian Heritage, Fresh TV, Shaftesbury Kids, Bell Fund, Sinking Ship Entertainment, Corus Entertainment, Apartment 11, Family Channel, 9 Story Entertainment, Cookie Jar and Hit Entertainment.