There’s a new professional fostering opportunity brewing at BBC Children’s and Education as part of its BBC Ignite content incubation program. 

The Beeb is inviting indie producers and production studios based in the UK to submit an expression of interest in collaborating on one of the animated projects that have been selected for the current edition of BBC Ignite. There are nine concepts going through stage two of the kickstarter at the moment, and up to six will be chosen to move on to stage three, which is due to start in the fall.

During that stage, production partners will help provide a “proof of concept” for the  idea—which could involve animatics, episode pilots, animation tests and scripting. Between US$32,000 (GBP£25,000) and US$128,000 (GBP£100,000) in development funding is earmarked to be invested in each stage-three concept.

This year’s projects were selected from more than 1,600 submissions resulting from a late 2023 callout that was open to a wide range of creative sources, including indie creators, established prodcos, animation studios and collectives.

With its BBC Ignite program, the Beeb is on a mission to help domestic creators with interesting animated concepts for kids get a leg up by running them through a co-development process with a possible commission at the end.

Ignite’s inaugural edition saw three projects go all the way: Duck and Frog (Sun & Moon), Captain Onion’s Buoyant Academy for Wayward Youth (Alt Animation) and The Underglow (Sam Morrison and Tanya Scott). Duck and Frog became the first Ignite commission to go into production last year with Mediawan Kids & Family co-producing.

Producers and studios interested in taking one of this year’s projects under their wing should submit an expression of interest form via email (ignite@bbc.co.uk) by May 16.