Celebrate Australia Initiative open for submissions

Creatives can now submit their applications to the joint initiative launched by The Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF) and Netflix, which will fund the development of two new original children’s series.

As part of the Celebrate Australia Initiative, we’re putting the call out for your ideas for live action series aimed at primary or tween audiences, and one animation series aimed at preschoolers, with the brief that they celebrate Australia in some way. From landscapes and animals, to sport or culture, or just some good old family humour; the choice is up to you and your imagination!

The initiative is looking for new concepts that are at early stage development.

These will be funded to develop a full series bible, storylines and pilot script, with the intention to move to further development if required, or be considered for a commission and financing by Netflix and ACTF.

ACTF CEO Jenny Buckland said: “The ACTF is thrilled to be partnering with Netflix to find and develop two new Australian children’s series for their global audience. Australian kids love Netflix and they deserve to see their own shows on the platform, and Australian producers make kids shows the whole world loves – it’s a great match.”

For the live action series (6-12 years), we are looking for shows that will appeal to our kid and tween target through quick and relevant hooks. Ideally, they will be light in tone dramas, fantasy, adventure, or even unscripted. Examples of quick hooks could be sports, mythical creatures, lore, outdoor survival, and the like. We look for shows that our core audience will find aspirational and can easily be described in one sentence.

For the preschool series, we’re open to a variety of formats (2D, CG, mixed media), and because of the way Netflix works, we don’t have a mandatory episodic runtime. Feel free to get creative and let us know the best length for the stories you want to tell! While we’re not looking for short form series (less than 3 minutes), we would suggest that there’s a sense of consistency across episodes (length-wise) so our young audience knows what to expect.

Those interested have until 31 May 2022 to submit their applications.

For full details on what the initiative is looking for, and submission requirements, click here.