Next year Thai PBS is coming up with a new channel for children and family programmes.  The organisation has taken up many new projects to increase the production of children’s programmes for the new channel. 

Thus an AIBD/NRK/ Thai PBS workshop on ‘Children TV Programmes was organised from 23 to 27 February in Bangkok to develop six of these projects.

20 participants – from Thai PBS and independent production companies participated in this activity.  The participants were talented, enthusiastic and hardworking TV professionals – with a sense of humour.

As part of the workshop we spent half a day screening programmes made by the participants — for me this has always been the most interesting part; for the participants it is a learning experience. As many of the participants were coming from small companies, opportunities to get professional feedback were limited. This part of the workshop gave them the opportunity to meet others from the profession and get the much needed feedback. In return they also got the chance to evaluate and learn from other such programmes.

In my workshops I try to focus on creativity, besides sharing in depth information about children’s use of media. I discuss, development needs of different age groups, new ways of using media via Internet and give a lot of exercises with drama and improvisations.  These exercises are meant to give ideas to work with children.

The theory that 4 brains are better than one was put to use in my workshop. The participants worked in six groups to maximise on creative processes. Group work helped in combining ideas which eventually gave better results than that of a single person’s ideation.

At the end of the workshop the 6 groups presented their ideas in a Pitch.  The hard work put in by the group was evident in the attractive presentations they had made.

Children from the Thai-Singapore International School meeting the participants

Finally, I wish to say that it is important for every country to produce their own children’s programmes. Using children from your own country for the programmes and scheduling them correctly is crucial. Therefore it is encouraging to see that Thai PBS is focusing on increasing nationally produced children's programmes. There is a digital war out there – everyone is fighting for your children’s soul and money! If you are not there for your children — others will take your place!

By Mr. Kalle Fürst, Consultant for NRK and Director of Fürst & Far Film and Fjernsyn