Soulla left her job as a secondary school teacher when she accidentally discovered screenwriting. She quickly realised that writing for the screen was the perfect marriage (storm!) of her two biggest passions (writing & photography) and she’s never looked back. Soulla is a second generation Liverpudlian Greek Cypriot
Category: Children’s
JAVID REZAI
Javid Rezai is an Iranian-Italian-British Screenwriter.
Winner of the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Prize in 2017 for Children’s Media, Javid was recognised as a Changemaker at the 2018 Children’s Media Conference and nominated for Debut Writer at the Edinburgh TV Festival New Voice Awards in 2020. In 2022, he was featured in BBC Teach’s INSIDE THE WRITER’S MIND online series.
Javid is interested in writing for younger audiences, and currently developing various original projects within the teen and children’s space.
Javid’s CV can be found here
SEYI ODUSANYA
Seyi has been building up his experience working on a variety of projects, live action, mixed media and animation writing for a numberof CBeebies shows, Molly and Mack, JoJo and GranGran and he has now joined the writing team for Odo made by Sixteen South for Milkshake, taking part in their virtual writer’s room and contributing episodes.
Seyi’s CV can be found here
AN VROMBAUT
At nine years old, An was happiest when writing and drawing, so promised herself that she’d never forget what it felt like to be nine and now she writes and draws for a living.
An’s grown-up writing life started with The Story of Henrietta the Hairy Hippo, the pilot episode for the pre-school TV series 64 Zoo Lane, which has now been broadcast on BBC/CBeebies for 17 years. She works from her converted garage, with a space for writing at one end and a space for drawing at the other, creating charming, playful, character-driven scripts as well as award-winning short films and picture books.
A visionary writer-director, An also works on other people’s IPs.
An’s CV can be found here
CIARAN MURTAGH AND ANDREW BARNETT JONES
BAFTA- and BAA-winning writing double act Ciaran and Andrew spent 10 years performing live comedy across the UK (and Denmark, for some reason) with their company The Black Sheep, before discovering that writing for TV meant they could make even more people laugh and get to sleep in their own beds. Since winning last place on The Slammer, they have been in constant demand for their witty, cheeky, irreverent, rambunctious writing style, working across all ages and aspects of comedy. They are also increasingly called on as head writers and script editors.
In 2016, the duo won the Children’s BAFTA writing award as part of the Gumball writing team and, in 2018, they won the writer award at the British Animation Awards for an episode of Counterfeit Cat.
Ciaran and Andrew are delighted to have won the 2020 Writers Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Children’s TV Episode, for the 2018 Christmas episode of Danger Mouse (which was also nominated for the 2019 Children’s BAFTAs!).
Black Sheep’s CV can be found here
SIMON JOWETT
Simon has written scripts and developed projects for a wide range of media, across an equally wide range of ages: from silent pre-school to extravagant action adventure, by way of animation, computer games, sketches, surreal sitcom and occasional fiction. His first professional sale was a script for a comic strip – a five-page Doctor Who story.
Acutely aware of the limited number of pages he has in which to tell his story, he favours fast-paced, tightly-structured, character-led work with a strong sense of storytelling, be it choosing what to watch or read or working on his latest script.
GILLIAN CORDEROY
Growing up on a farm in rural Oxfordshire helped develop Gillian’s
left-of-field imagination. Her keen comic eye and gift for creating the unexpected make her a popular choice for writing teams and development work. She writes for film and TV and has many years’ experience working on live-action and animated scripts in the UK, the US and Europe.
Gillian lived in Italy for many years where she taught English, wrote novels and trained the Italian Fire Brigade. She has an MA in Screenwriting from the London College of Communication.
Gillian’s CV can be found here
KEITH CHAPMAN
There’s a lot to be said for advertising. It unearths talent like Keith Chapman, who once worked as an art director selling shaving foam and Wotsits before joining Jim Henson and his Muppets.
Keith went on to create BOB THE BUILDER and, since Bob’s first appearance in 1999, the show has sold to every country in the world, generating $5bn in sales to date. A new-look series of Bob the Builder was launched in 2015.
Keith co-founded Chapman Entertainment, creating FIFI & THE FLOWERTOTS and developing ROARY THE RACING CAR. Chapman also produced LITTLE CHARLEY BEAR and RAA RAA THE NOISY LION. He created Nick Junior’s global smash-hit preschool show, PAW PATROL, which is fast becoming another billion-dollar brand. Keith is currently developing more children’s shows.
MIGHTY EXPRESS – this series, currently on Netflix, is the second collaboration with Spin Master.
DENISE CASSAR
After a 12 year career as an award winning comedy actress Denise gave birth to some small people (just two) and decided to start writing stuff that would make them laugh. Subsequently she has spent the last 14 years turning random ideas about animals, trains, aliens, toddlers and superheroes into episodes of some of preschool’s best loved shows such as Bing, Raa Raa the Noisy Lion, Noddy, Thomas the Tank Engine, Waybuloo, Topsy and Tim and more recently The Clangers. Now those small people are a bit older she’s attempting to stay relevant to them by trying not to embarrass them on social media and writing telly for a slightly older audience; shows like Bottersnikes and Gumbles, Dennis The Menace, The Rubbish World of Dave Spud and Mr Bean. She won a Writers Guild Award for Best Children’s Script in 2015 which was one of the last opportunities she had to leave her writing shed at the bottom of the garden.
Denise’s CV can be found here