ACTF News

The Australian Children’s Television Foundation invested or committed $11.14 million in production funding during the 2024-25 financial year, as well as investing more than $1 million in the development of 25 more projects.

In the first year of the ACTF’s new funding arrangement with the Commonwealth Government, $6,156,725 was invested in four projects in production during the reporting period – the live-action and puppetry hybrid series Knee High Spies, feature film Whale Shark Jack, and animations Happy House and Ginger and the Vegesaurs Series 4. A further $4,983,462 was committed to five projects to commence production in the 2025-26 financial year.

Five ACTF-supported programs premiered during the year: Kangaroo Beach Season 3, Kangaroo Beach Mountain Mystery Special, Space Nova Series 2, Little J & Big Cuz Series 4 and the family feature film RUNT, which was the highest grossing Australian film for the 2024-25 financial year, bringing in more than $6 million at the Australian box office. 

The ACTF invested $1,081,536 in 25 projects being developed across New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The ACTF also partnered with Screen Australia to deliver the Kids IP Incubator – an initiative to empower eight creative teams to develop IP for digital-first platforms, like YouTube.

Several ACTF-supported programs had success on the festival and awards circuit. The first family film from the Stan/ACTF partnership, Windcatcher, won a 2025 BANFF World Media World Media Festival Rockies Award, a MIPCOM Diversify TV Excellence Award and the Screen Producers Australia (SPA) Award for Children’s Production of the Year, while RUNT received the SPA Award for Best Feature Film Production, and the upcoming animated series Tales from Outer Suburbia was selected from more than 3,900 entries to screen at the prestigious Annecy Animation Festival in France.

The ACTF’s international distribution team launched four new programs to the market and sold programs to 26 different broadcasters across the world, including Canal+ (France), National Geographic (USA), DR TV (Denmark) and Netflix (USA).

The ACTF created a dedicated standalone education website offering curriculum-aligned content, interactive activities and practical tools that bring screen stories into the classroom in powerful and purposeful ways. Ten new learning resources were released during the year as well as the ACTF’s first ever curated clip collections exploring Consent and Respectful Relationships and Civics and Citizenship, and three virtual workshops took place with 315 schools across Australia taking part.

ACTF Board Chair Helen Silver said: “The programs we are supporting would not be made without ACTF support, which would mean barely any Australian screen content for our nation’s children. Opportunities for fresh, new, innovative Australian children’s content are becoming harder than ever to secure. This makes each of the new shows we are supporting extra special.”

You can view the complete 2024-25 Annual Report here.