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Peter Salmon, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Director North, will launch a new digital initiative at The Manchester Media Festival today, Wednesday 18 November.

@North will reach out to new and established digital producers and agencies across the whole of the north in a link up with ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Children's – one of the departments moving to Salford in 2011.

@North will encourage and support the development and delivery of interactive content for children, with up to four projects with a total budget of £500,000 available for commissions by C³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and CBeebies.

The project, which represents a new model of engagement with independent companies and digital agencies across the North, will rely on close collaboration with the regional screen agencies – Northwest Vision and Media, Northern Film and Media and Screen Yorkshire.

This pilot project will be led by ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Children's and will involve multi-disciplinary teams from many other areas of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ such as Future, Media and Technology (FM&T) in new collaborative ways of working.

The key objectives for the project are:

For C³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ andCBeebies to tap into new opportunities for innovation and creativity.

To stimulate and inspire the digital sector across the North of England, initially focusing on creating new children's content.

To understand and help develop the supply chain across the North for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and build on existing creativity and skills.

To make the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ North process for commissioning multiplatform content open and collaborative.

To share knowledge about the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s infrastructure, processes and audiences.

It is intended that @North will provide a blueprint of how ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ North can work more openly in MediaCityUK and will involve more ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ division partners as it develops.

Commenting on @North, Peter Salmon said: "This is an exciting new concept and there is real business up for grabs, with C³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and CBeebies commissions to be won by creative organisations working on interactive media across the North of England. There is some great creative work going on in the digital sector across the North and we want to work in partnership to develop new and exciting multiplatform content for our young audiences."

Independent companies and digital agencies in the North are invited to send expressions of interest in the @North project to Mario Dubois, Project Lead – mario.dubois@bbc.co.uk.

Notes to Editors

Timeline:

Launch November 2009
Expressions of interest in workshops and the projects

January/February 2010
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ workshops across the North

Feb/March 2010
Commissioning briefs and ideas submissions

April/June 2010
Ideas development

July – September
Pitches to commissioning

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Press Office