New Development Fund for factual entertainment launched by Climate Spring

Screen industry organisation Climate Spring launches its new Development Fund for global unscripted TV and factual entertainment, expanding the company’s funding offer beyond scripted content.

The new Fund will provide finance opportunities for production companies and creatives with innovative concepts for unscripted television shows, supercharging content that entertains and updates the conversation on climate change. Through incentivising the creation of compelling and commercially viable shows, Climate Spring aims to reach mainstream audiences with new formats that are able to engage viewers in climate solutions rather than scare or make them feel guilty.

The Fund will focus on supporting unscripted formats related to the transition away from polluting fossil fuels, ranging from shows on home renovation, nature friendly farming, cooking shows, competitive formats, noisy pop-docs, ambitious factual entertainment productions and more. The Fund is looking to develop shows in the English language market globally as well as for European audiences.

Climate Spring have hired Development Exec David Leach as their new Head of Unscripted, whose role will be to spearhead the Development Fund and build partnerships in the unscripted production community. David has worked as Head of Development at Boom TV, and as a Development Producer and Exec at a number of indies including Multistory, True North and Icon Films.

David Leach, Head of Unscripted at Climate Spring, said: “This is a really exciting opportunity to build momentum within the unscripted community around an issue that we all face together. Broadcasters are increasingly asking for ideas in the climate space and I hope to work with production companies to offer innovative and entertaining climate content that reaches under-served audiences. With this fund I also want to offer indies space to take more creative risks especially in fact-ent.”

Lucy Stone, Founder and Director of Climate Spring, said: “Mainstream television has a really powerful role to play in normalising, demystifying and engaging people in solutions for the climate crisis. Climate solutions are all there ready to be adopted – but most people do not know this. There is a lot of fear and misinformation on the climate crisis and we know that people are really worried about it. But as a society we are also dealing with the increased cost of living and all the other pressures of life. We believe that making people feel guilty on top of anxiety won’t help us in tackling this crisis. With this new unscripted Development Fund we will harness the power of TV to accelerate the creation of content that shows us new social norms, normalises climate solutions and makes low carbon the default. This is about more than showing individual actions; it’s about creating new cultural norms.”

The launch of Climate Spring’s Unscripted Fund comes at an exciting time of growth for the organisation, with several new funders coming on board as well as exciting hires from the screen industry joining in recent months.

Climate Spring works closely with film and TV industry partners, gatekeepers, commissioners, creatives and producers to: identify climate themes with potential to be developed into mainstream media content; to support the creation of new screen narratives and inspiring stories about climate change; and to normalise climate solutions in a range of mainstream content from prime time drama to unscripted entertainment formats. Climate Spring works from within the industry as a partner organisation, making interventions at different points in the production life cycle, from ideation to distribution.