WRITER

WRITING THAT PUTS THE GRR IN GIRL, THE ART IN FART: STORIES THAT GIVE KIDS A HUG.

HELLO


Urban and gritty I'm not

I'm more chocolate and snot

But stories need bite

So I'm never trite

Because children matter a lot.

My name is Jayne Kirkham and I am a writer with over thirty years’ experience working with and writing for children and young people. I’ve written for theatre, film, television, radio and online. I’ve worked on projects ranging in size from small conservation films in Africa to museum installations to international feature films. For more information about what I’ve done, click on “What I’ve Done”.

WHY I DO IT

Growing up on Exmoor gave me a lifelong love of nature, adventure and the mysterious. It also, one way or another, nurtured a love of cinema, theatre and poetry. Having studied Film, Drama, English Literature and Screenwriting to Masters level, my first commission was a play for Radio 4. But having worked with children all my life, and having never grown out of watching cartoons, I decided to write for children and families.

Commissions include original feature films, adaptations of novels, shows for preschool, and older kids and online. I will write for grown-ups (I adapted Marina Lewyka’s novel Two Caravans, into an animated feature for Blue Zoo) but please don’t ask me to be all urban and gritty. I don’t do gritty but I do do muck.

Snort: I wrote do-do! Do-dos! I do like to squeeze out something earthy. But it has to be done with finesse, aplomb: I’m on a mission to put the art back into fart. Or is it the other way round?

I’m also on a mission to put the grr back in girl. And boys actually: getting kids outdoors in stories and for real. I’m a canoe and kayak coach. I love the whoosh and wah-hay of white water. But I really love the woohoo of someone realising they are so much more than they ever imagined! I think stories should empower as well as entertain. I write stories that give kids a hug.

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Stories with action about

Girls that can fly,

Ostriches, bunnies and apes.

War stories, more stories,

Comedy, drama and tall stories

Of doctors, detectives and grapes.

  • Toad and Friends

    Toad and Friends, HoHo Entertainment/Cartoon Network

  • Tonies stories

    Toniebox

  • Showtown, The Museum of Fun and Entertainment

  • Treasure Champs, Three Arrows Media

  • Little Roy, Jam Media/CBeebies/CBBC

  • Tee and Mo – Plug-in Media, Cbeebies

  • CBeebies Radio – CBeebies

  • Bing – Acamar, CBeebies

  • Ajani’s Great Ape Adventures – Nature for Kids

  • Olive The Ostrich – Blue Zoo Productions, Nick Jnr

  • Roze and the Robots – Gravy Media/Passion Pictures

  • NOKSU – Evergreen Films/Epidem, YLE TV1

  • Bowerbird – Artemisia Films

  • Last Night – Deadline Films/Irish Film Board

  • The Deadline – Deadline Films/Metrodome

  • Fei – Peach Blossom Media/Evergreen Entertainment

  • 6.6.04 – The Film Council

  • Where The Skylarks Nest – BBC Radio 4


News, views, stories and stuff

No piffle or waffle, flimflam or guff

All things considered and not off the cuff

No more of this rhyme scheme: enuff is enuff!

  • HAS IT BEEN A YEAR?

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: Uncategorized

    Since I last told anyone what I’d been up to? YES apparently so. I know it looks bad. Looks like I haven’t done anything and have melted away but it’s just that I’ve been TOO BUSY. In fact, I’ve had one of my busiest years EVER. Most of it has been taken up writing for Toniebox. That cute little smart speaker for young children. I’ve written original stories and poems, script edited a series of stories about Steiff Soft Cuddly Friends, abridged classic novels like The Wind In The Willows, Black Beauty and Five Children and It, retold fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Goldilocks, written twelve Christmas stories and one about the poor little Christmas tree in January.

    Writing the spoken word rather than the screen has been a blast and I particularly liked writing for that young audience. So much so that I have been developing my own ideas for story series again. Young and funny and with a lot of love.

    Which is how I’d describe the other work I’ve been doing. This time with the wonderful HoHo Entertainment folk. It’s not the right time for me to say too much about this fantastic new series yet, but IT IS VERY HARD KEEPING QUIET. I absolutely love it and think the audience will too. SOOOOOOO excited.

    And breathe.

  • MY EXCUSE IS, I’VE BEEN HAVING FUN

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: Uncategorized

    Some people live online, they breathe it, eat it, drink and for all I know, poop it. But that’s not me and about this time every year I realise it. Again. For this is the time of year when people like me prepare for the Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield (only its not in Sheffield, its online). People like me polish their pitches, check out what delegates they want to pitch to and make sure they have their business plans for what they’re going to pitch all ready. And of course they probably have a fantastic online presence: Instagram, maybe a YouTube channel and definitely they TikTok and tweet. I set up these things with the best intentions and then, well things happen. Things that I should tweet about and tell on TikTok but somehow talking about the things isn’t nearly as exciting as doing them and so suddenly its six months since I was here. Believe me, I have not been doing nothing.

    I’ve written a novel. I’ve rewritten a novel. And that isn’t a writer’s way of saying they’ve been unemployed.

    In between writing my novel and rewriting my novel, I have been writing for Toniebox. 10 minute stories for little ones to listen to about all sorts of wonderful things: springtime, going to sleep, big bad wolves and if you love Steiff bears, you’ll love their Soft Cuddly Friends.

    I’d tell you more but I’m already onto the next thing – the Olympics and a tiny toad who takes on the world.

    Maybe, one day I’ll remember to announce all these things in the moment they happen but until then, I have canoes and ducks and dragonflies to see to, oh and a snare drum that needs some attention. And of course, the novel needs some more work.

  • WHY JAYNE LOVES 12TH NIGHT

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: Uncategorized

    Best Night of Christmas.

    No pressure to be perfect, in fact the very opposite – the decorations are falling down, the chocolates that you thought would last until Easter have all been eaten, there’s a bit of cake left and half a ham and other less identifiable things in the fridge that need using up. Nobody has to give anyone any presents or put on party frocks or not be naughty and everyone can let their waist bands out and relax.

    In the Christian calendar 12th Night falls on Epiphany which, back in the day was as important as Christmas Day.  In fact one half of the Church, either the Eastern or Western orthodoxy (I would need to look up which but I have things to do, so I’ll leave the looking up to you), celebrated Epiphany rather than Christmas Day.  Then they decided to meet in the middle, celebrate both events and the days in between.  Well, it was winter and there wasn’t much else going on. 

    Anyway, enough of the history lesson.  The upshot is that by the time I was a kid, 12th Night had become a thing that Shakespeare wrote about and, in the West Country where I grew up, a thing before you packed Christmas away for another year. 

    Not that we did much other than eat up the left overs, play games and get the decorations down because Mum said it was unlucky to have them up. 

    I can’t remember when Ian and I started having 12th Night parties.  Probably when our children were small and I found a recipe for a Twelfth Cake. I read about the Lords and Ladies of Misrule and decided we’d have some of that.  Twelfth Night, is all about turning things on their head: the youngest member of a cathedral choir becomes bishop for the day. Yes I know that’s done on another date in Advent somewhere but folk traditions evolve thanks to people like me not paying attention to historical evidence. The important thing is that the servant becomes the served.

    This turvytopsing is randomised with the Twelfth Cake, which includes a dried bean and/or a pea.  Whoever finds the bean and/or pea (hopefully without breaking their teeth) becomes lord and/or lady of misrule.  I can’t remember the whole decree (it’s in the attic) but if you’re Lord/Lady of Misrule, you get to shout ‘Hear Ye, Hear Ye..’ in a very loud voice and command all locks be broken, especially those around the heart, and insist that everyone become as little children and have a jolly good time.  I was Lady of Misrule for the Stroud Wassail once and I bloody loved it: strutting into all the pubs and round the streets with my retinue of mummers, wassailers and …others, demanding fun be had. The power.

    Sadly, no public wassailing this year.  And no 12th Night Party.  But if we were having one, we would have gone to the local brewery and got a firkin of their finest, would have cooked the Twelfth Cake (mine’s a layer of shortcrust pastry, then almond paste, with bean and/or pea secreted, topped with puff pastry and decorated with crowns and is in fact called a King Cake and is French. We would have eaten all the Twelfth Cake already, because it’s what we now call a Christmas Cake). 

    We would have invited EVERYONE from near and far (finding beds, pitching tents and finding space for campervans round the village), put up tarps and lit firepits for the overflow of people, figured out how to feed everyone without plates (mail order pasties are just the best), told everyone to bring a party piece (musical instrument, joke, interesting talent), dug out my old Brunhilde helmet (no reason other than I like wearing it and the dress code is, ‘What You Will’- see that clever allusion to Shakespeare there?), and made some sort of playlist to fall back on. 

    From about midday, people would have started to arrive (mostly those from a long way who want first dibs on beds) and stuff would happen.  Not sure what stuff, usually involved tapping the beer keg and baking potatoes and catching up with old friends I think. 

    Once most people had arrived, we would get the King Cake cut and the new Lord and/or Lady of Misrule, checked for broken teeth and then led to their throne and crowned.  The decrees made, anyone that fancied entertaining the Lord and/or Lady of Misrule would do it, with songs and stories and displays of double jointed elbows and belly fluff as appropriate. Which all sounds rather orderly but it was not, because not everyone is into belly fluff.  There’d be a whole lot of things going on in different rooms and bits of the garden.  And every now and then wonderful things coming out of the kitchen or from the drinks shed.  And the musicians would jam and there would be singing and dancing and re-enactments (St George and a dragon turned up once), other nonsense and, if there was room, games.  Sadly we have never had enough room in this house for Slipper Olympics.  Anyway, it would have all carried on until the last person fell down and then whoever made it to the morning would stabilize their stomach with a big bacon butty breakfast (veggie options available).  And that would be our 12th Night.

    This year will be quieter.  Just us.  Not much misruling then.  But we do have the Obama Llamas game to play and several bottles of mead.  And I’ve just had an epiphany: we will have enough room to hold a Slipper Olympics!

I am represented by Julian Friedmann -
Blake Friedmann Literary Agency Ltd,
First Floor, Selous House,
5-12 Mandela Street,
London
NW1 0DU
+44 20 7387 842
Julian@blakefriedmann.co.uk

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