Neil & Annie Richards
Writer, Children's - Children’s (TV, interactive and animation)
Agent: Jean Kitson - jean@kitsonpress.co.uk
Neil is a prolific writer with plenty of experience writing for linear TV, online, interactive and games – and a love of collaboration and working in creative teams. He started writing in the mid-90’s, and since then has scripted children’s TV (episodes of Thomas & Friends, Microsoap, Ace Lightning, Carrie and David’s Popshop, Alphablocks, Messy Goes to Okido) and more than a dozen TV and radio series for BBC Education and Learning. Two years co-writing with Douglas Adams in 1997 opened the world of games and interactive drama: he has since created the story and script for over 25 console, pc and tablet games including major titles such as Just Cause (1 & 2), The da Vinci Code and the Broken Sword series. He has had 3 BAFTA nominations, a Writers’ Guild nomination and an IGDA Writing Excellence nomination for his game and TV scripts. He is a founding director of interactive specialists The Mustard Corporation, an advisory committee member of The Children’s Media Conference and a founder member of Australian transmedia specialists Storylab.
Annie has a fine art background and a passion for story-telling with under-fives. She has been teaching in pre-schools for 15 years, and combines writing with running a pre-school. Inspired by the creative philosophy and approach of Reggio Emilia, she also runs weekly art groups for 2-3 year olds at her local contemporary art gallery Artsway – putting freedom at the heart of learning. As well as her Early Years qualifications she is now bringing all her experience and understanding of this age group to her scripting with Neil.
Neil and Annie started writing together three years ago. After (unofficially!) collaborating on scripts for Turmeric’s live action series Talkie Time, Neil and Annie co-wrote ten episodes for series two and three of Alphablocks. They then scripted three episodes for Pesky’s animated series Boj for Cbeebies, and have been contributing to Honig’s online animation Milli.
Their interactive story book for early years I Believe in Fairies is currently in production with Box of Frogs Media.