Building on broadcast

10 October 2008

As part of our broadcast activities, a series of ‘Crossover Labs’ are planned for late 2008 and early 2009. These week-long, intensive events bring together professionals from audiovisual production (including TV, web and games) with professionals from other fields to develop new media projects.

We are funding three Crossover Labs - the first to involve scientists - which will be themed around games, documentaries and content for children.

This programme follows on from the success of another unique collaborative project: Science on Film. Taught by leading broadcast professionals and scientists, and run in partnership with the Documentary Filmmakers Group, this project brought together eight film makers and eight biomedical scientists on an intensive film production and training scheme. You can watch the resulting films online.

A number of broadcast projects to celebrate Darwin 200 (the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth) are also in development. These include Evolution Matters, two programmes about good practice in teaching evolution in primary and secondary schools. We have joined with Channel 4 to fund an alternate reality game for 14- to 19-year-olds around genomics and evolution. Finally, we are commissioning a four-minute animated fly-through of the Tree of Life to form part of David Attenborough’s BBC1 special on Darwin’s birthday.