Children's documentary: A call to preserve real stories

By Tatyana Terzopoulos 26-08-2025

In an article written for the Children’s Media Yearbook, Dr Tatyana Terzopoulos, assistant professor at the RTA School of Media/The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University, calls for an increased focus on documentary programming in a kids industry dominated by animation and scripted content.

Documentary media for and about children remains a vital form of storytelling for this special audience. At times, it is a mirror, reflecting aspects of young people’s identities, lives, interests (and concerns). Other times, it is a window into the experiences of children from different backgrounds. However, as a form of storytelling for children, children’s documentaries continue to be overshadowed by scripted/fictional live-action and animated programmes.

Despite the abundance of media spanning professionally-produced programmes and user-generated content that young audiences can and do engage with, a notable lack of stories that centre real children and honour children’s worlds feels especially troubling.

With recent funding cuts to broadcasters like PBS in the US as the latest blow to a broader children’s media production industry, a form often framed as ‘in crisis’, children’s documentary media production will likely fade even further into the background.

During these particularly volatile times, opportunities for media to thoughtfully include, explore and reflect children’s realities is more vital than ever, and yet it has arguably never been at more risk of becoming further deprioritised. I feel compelled to lend my voice – as shaped by my roles as a children’s media producer of close to two decades, and as a children’s media and media cultures researcher – to advocate for the importance of children’s documentary media storytelling.

Documentary has long been understood as the ‘creative treatment of actuality.’ This definition, attributed to the Scottish filmmaker and founder of the National Film Board in Canada, John Grierson, in 1936, was attributed to the standalone films produced at the time that were typically focused on specific events or subjects.

Given this legacy, it’s understandable that the term ‘documentary’ is often associated with one-off, longer-form storytelling. However, for young audiences, this traditional definition clashes with how children increasingly engage with media – particularly non-fiction – in bite-sized doses, and often created by non-media professionals.

This definition also does not fully capture how professionally-produced educational children’s media programmes often blend factual information and even documentary elements with scripted components into a ‘documentary-style’ hybrid form, which educate as well as entertain.

In both the UK and Canada, as is the case for many countries around the world, documentary-style content has found a home with public service media outlets (PSMs). Given their cultural mandates and investment in civic representation, PSMs have been key to advancing socially meaningful non-fiction content, including for children’s populations, that might not otherwise thrive in commercial spaces.

Early examples in the UK produced by the BBC such as Blue Peter (launched in 1958) and Newsround (launched in 1972), blended documentary and magazine formats to reflect children’s real lives and interests. Newsround in particular was one of the first news programmes made specifically for children.

Canada has also had a strong tradition in the non-fiction children’s media arena. Through our national and provincial PSMs, generations of children have had access to not only factual/documentary content, but to stories that feature them and involve their participation, especially through the production of interstitial-type content.

My own children’s media production career was ‘launched’ when I co-created and produced an award-winning documentary-style series, SWAP-TV, which blended playful competitive elements from the then-emerging genre of reality TV with more traditional documentary storytelling. The 39-episode series was commissioned by our provincial public-service broadcaster, TVOntario, and it went on to win a Gemini award in the relatively new non-fiction category in 2004.

What felt like a time of great promise for children’s non-fiction media stands in stark contrast to the current state of children’s media. There is a growing demand for documentary media, with Netflix increasing its investment globally in non-fiction stories over the last decade, but children’s factual content remains underfunded and inconsistently supported across PSMs globally.

Over the years I spent as a freelance children’s media professional, it became apparent to me that Canadian children’s media producers have frequently found themselves caught between recognising the importance of producing ‘diverse’ genres of content, including documentary/factual media, and financial realities that lead them to prioritise scripted live-action or animated production.

Many, including the Shaw Rocket Fund, which is a vital organisation in the Canadian children’s media funding and advocacy ecosystem, have been raising concerns about the lack of incentive to support non-fiction programming for over a decade.

Children have long expressed a desire for media that reflects their lived realities and personal experiences. Scholars have emphasised how non-fiction media helps position children as valued societal members, supporting the development of civic identities, empathy and critical thinking. Both my professional production experiences and my research align with these findings.

Despite the growing prevalence of social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok – which open up the potential for more perspectives, including children’s, to be shared – we are also living in an era marked by misinformation and disinformation. According to Ofcom, children now report that they are increasingly struggling to differentiate between fictional drama and factual documentary.

My experience working with a large number of child participants on productions like SWAP-TV provided valuable insights into the impact of non-fiction and documentary-style media on children – both as storytellers and as audiences.

The children featured in SWAP-TV were given the unique chance to share their lives with the children they swapped places with. The show enabled them to offer their experiences and viewpoints to a wider audience of children across the country. The format of the show was designed to centre children, including providing each participant with the opportunity to craft some relevant ‘challenges’ for their counterpart during their ‘swap’.

This was early into the digital media era and, for many of these children, participating in the series was a rare opportunity to step into an active storytelling and media participant role at a time when their relationship to media was almost exclusively passive.

A child-centred approach became core to my practice as I produced many more documentary-style and educational programmes for children in the years that followed, and I have strived to reflect what I consider to be the form’s core values: safe participation, real-life relevance and ethical representation. These values now guide my research into co-creation models for non-fiction children’s media storytelling – approaches that engage both emerging producers of children’s media and children themselves as active participants in the storytelling process.

Despite the volatility in global media industries, children’s media professionals continue to create meaningful documentary storytelling for young audiences. Recent standout examples include the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)’s I Can Do It series which features children with disabilities completing everyday challenges.

Each 15-minute film is produced by a different EBU member and reflects the cultural perspectives of the country while adhering to a shared thematic focus. The series demonstrates the potential of collaborative, international efforts in producing meaningful children’s content for diverse audiences.

In Canada, there have been some exceptional child-centred documentary-style programmes produced in recent years. Productions such as It’s My Party and My Home, My Life carefully centre children in the storytelling and ensure that diverse populations of Canadian children have the chance to see kids like them, and their traditions, interests and daily lives centred and celebrated on the screen – and without the need for a streaming service subscription.

Another notable programme, Old Enough (based on Japanese reality programme-turned-format Hajimete no Otsukai), found a way to offer a rare peek into the perspectives, voices and experiences of Canadian preschoolers – while producing a show that would reach wider audience appeal.

While it is important to shine a light on children’s documentary media success stories, the broader question remains, however: how can we continue to support the future of children’s documentary media in a landscape increasingly dominated by commercial interests, shifting cultural priorities and dwindling funding.

Agnes Augustin, CEO of the Shaw Rocket Fund, argues that structural support is crucial for sustaining a vital industry of children’s media producers. The Shaw Rocket Fund suggests a specific solution – that 20% of Canadian programming expenditures be allocated to children’s content, with explicit reference to documentary and factual programming.

It’s clear that a multifaceted approach is necessary – through collaboration, advocacy and a rethinking of how children’s non-fiction storytelling is financed, produced and celebrated. I offer the following considerations towards creating a more inclusive and diverse media ecosystem for children’s content:

Advocacy for change: efforts must pivot toward solutions, such as the Shaw Rocket Fund’s proposal to earmark funding specifically for children’s factual programming.

Expand the definition of documentary: advocate for the expansion of the children’s documentary to clearly include emerging formats like shortform, hybrid and participatory content. This expanded definition should be incorporated into funding models and regulatory frameworks to better support diverse storytelling approaches.

New co-creation and collaboration models and partners: encourage new coproduction models with stakeholders beyond media who are committed to children’s well-being and who recognise the importance of cultivating youth- centred, co-creative storytelling models that place young people at the heart of content creation.

Positioning children as collaborators: it is essential to recognise that children should not only be viewed as passive audiences, but as active collaborators and creators in the media they consume.

Perhaps we must start with recognising children’s documentary media as not simply targeting a particular demographic, but as a civic responsibility that plays a critical role in shaping young voices and fostering their engagement with society. Let’s commit to championing authentic representation, fostering co-creative practices and elevating the young storytellers whose voices and experiences urgently need to be seen and heard in our media landscape.

This article was written for the Children’s Media Yearbook, put together by the Children’s Media Foundation, and can be purchased here.