Documentary Ideas | Education

Wed 6th August 2014



RTÉ Education are seeking fresh documentaries ideas that deal with the experience of those that are hard of hearing.

RTÉ Commissioning Brief

Head of Regional, Wildlife & Education - Ray McCarthy

Executive Producers: Colm O' Callaghan, Education & ScienceRegional, Diversity & Wildlife

DEADLINE Thursday 28th August at 5pm

RTÉ Television has long chronicled the experiences of the Irish deaf communities.

As part of its ongoing commitment to programming in this area, RTÉ One will transmit two stand-alone, one hour documentaries in prime time slots: - one towards the end of 2014 and the other in 2015.

RTÉ Education is seeking fresh documentary ideas that deal with the experiences of those that are deaf or hard of hearing. Proposals can deal with historical or contemporary events and can be observational or authored. But all proposals should be rooted in what has - and what remains - a unique and important aspect of Irish life.

The closing date for receipt of proposals on the RTÉ eCommissioning system is Thursday 28th August at 5pm and the budget is set at c.€110,000 per project.

We ask, in the first instance, that producers submit ideas into the eCommissioning system:

https://e-commissioning.rte.ie/SWIFT.Web/skins/rte/login.aspx

under the Programme Category Education "Documentaries for the Deaf"

Commissioning Priorities:The primary aim of this commissioning team is to enhance the RTÉ schedules with innovative and thought- provoking programming.This is achieved through a combination full commissions [Des Bishop's Chinese Revolution, Taking Care of Business, Genealogy Roadshow, Ear To The Ground, Living The Wildlife, Class Swap], support for suitable, ambitious B.A.I. projects [The Secret Life Of The Shannon, Underwater Ireland, Building Ireland, In Good Hands, Tommy Bowe's Bodycheck], third party, co- funded series [Kevin McAleer - Our Friends In The North, What in The World] and also backing attractive Advertiser Funded projects [Dragons Den, Tracks & Trails].

This department takes on challenging campaigning subjects in the Education sphere with recent critically acclaimed series such as The Scholarship, Bullyproof and The Teens' Midwife.

We continue to develop our commissioning in Education with an upcoming series, Class Swap, which follows Transition Year students from Ireland as they exchange their schools in Limerick, Meath and Leitrim for schools in Finland, Spain and Poland.

We also commission a range of one-off documentaries that play at 9.35 on Mondays on RTÉ One.

Not afraid of being provocative, we have recently commissioned a range of documentaries based on controversial characters and topics, from Child Pageants to sex and relationships for people of disability, transplantation and the Holocaust.

This commissioning team is often the first point of contact for new production companies from across the country.

Key to the team's strategy is the identification of new ideas, the working-up of proposals with producers and, often, the funding of development. If proposals to us are more suited to the other areas, they'll be directed there.

Our programmes are scheduled in a range of evening slots and we encourage programme makers to consider from the off about where their ideas might play in the RTÉ schedule.