The Children’s Media Conference has revealed that its editorial director, Greg Childs, has been awarded an OBE for Services to International Trade and the Children’s Media Sector in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List.
The award has been presented to Greg (pictured) in recognition of his considerable contribution to children’s media throughout his career – which started at the BBC where he worked for 27 years primarily as a director, producer and executive producer of children’s programmes.
His credits include iconic preschool series Play School, while he was also the producer of Record Breakers with Roy Castle, Cheryl Baker and Kris Akabusi.
In 1998, Greg created the first Children’s BBC websites and ran one of the BBC’s first cross-media units creating interactive content online and linear programming for kids and teens for TV, before becoming head of children’s digital.
In this role, Greg was deputy commissioner for Children’s BBC, while running a day-time preschool service on BBC Choice, and developing the children’s channels CBBC and CBeebies, which Greg steered to their successful launch in 2002.
He set up Childseye Consulting in 2004, where he developed projects for Playhouse Disney in the US and managed the launch of the CITV Channel among other projects.
It was also in 2004 that Greg was invited to join Kathy Loizou in setting up a conference for children’s media professionals in Sheffield – the first of its kind in the UK. At first embedded in the Showcomotion Children’s Media Film Festival, the annual conference grew into a pan-media, industry-wide event covering all aspects of developing, creating and distributing content to children’s and youth audiences.
The Children’s Media Conference (CMC) now regularly welcomes 1,200 delegates to Sheffield. Over 200 speakers contribute to the event and all the content is produced by industry volunteers, making it uniquely relevant.
As editorial director of CMC, Greg is responsible for the content it offers the industry. At the same time he provides behind-the-scenes support to companies and freelancers finding their way in the children’s content market.
“This is a fantastic new year present,” Greg commented. “Not just for me but for the whole kids’ media industry. It’s for the hard work of so many UK creatives and companies that make internationally successful projects, as well as the CMC team in Sheffield.
“It also recognises all the people who volunteer to make The Children’s Media Conference a success – advisors, speakers, session producers, student helpers – they all do their bit to make the kids’ media sector the best it can be. And inspiring volunteer effort keeps the Children’s Media Foundation going too. I’ve just done the gathering together, cajoling and persuading, steering the ship full of all these people who care about kids.”
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