Branching out - The Sesame Tree

Published Friday 4 April 2008 at 12:35 by Michael Quinn

Sesame Street’s newest co-production, The Sesame Tree, is launching in Northern Ireland this week. Its makers, BBC Northern Ireland and SixteenSouth, are hoping the show will promote self-esteem amongst children after decades of division. Michael Quinn reports

When the children’s television programme Sesame Street was first announced four decades ago, no one could have guessed at just how successful its peculiar blend of entertainment and education, slapstick and social commentary, flesh and blood presenters and fun fur creatures would prove to be.

One of the best loved of children’s shows, with successive generations captivated by its sense of fun and its vivid engagement with a child-centred view of the world, Sesame Street now has a presence in more than 120 countries, with the successful format proving malleable enough to fuel more than 20 co-productions with national broadcasters in some of the most dynamic and difficult territories in the world - South Africa, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico and Kosovo among them.

Now comes the show’s newest co-production and it is much closer to home. Launching this month, The Sesame Tree is being made in collaboration with BBC Northern Ireland and local independent producer SixteenSouth with the intention, says the show’s owners, Sesame Workshop, of “encouraging children aged three to six to develop self-esteem and a love of learning, as well as an openness to and curiosity about others as a bridge to peace and stability”.

That last ambition, however, may prove problematic in a society in which education is still organised along strictly segregated lines, with just 5% of children being taught in integrated schools and so-called “peace lines” continuing to gouge their way through divided communities in Belfast.

But Colin Williams, creative director and executive producer at SixteenSouth, is optimistic that The Sesame Tree will contribute to the development of a new Northern Ireland.

“A strong focus on learning, and based heavily on Sesame values, the programme aims to teach Generation Zero - the first generation born in Northern Ireland outside of the Troubles - life values, such as respect for each other and the environment.”

With a reported budget of $1 million, SixteenSouth’s pitch for the programme was described by Sesame Workshop chief executive Gary E Knell as “an original, exciting concept”.

Mixing established characters with newly created creatures, the 20-episode series has found itself engaging with still fragile and raw sensibilities, even before it went into production.

“There was a lot of speculation about which characters would be Catholic and which Protestant, and how we’d deal with the political situation here,” recalls Williams. “But the show’s not about that at all. That’s all in the past and The Sesame Tree is about moving forward.”

It has taken the best part of a decade for the Sesame brand to put down roots in Northern Ireland, the idea of a locally-based show first mooted in 1999 at a symposium organised by Queen’s University, Belfast.

The long gestation period, says Shari Rosenfeld, Sesame Workshop’s vice-president of developing and emerging markets, is not unusual.

“Sesame Street is not a cookie-cutter show. It was designed, originally, around the needs of children in the United States and, although the formula is exportable, we always employ local educators and creators in whatever territory we go to. This is not about coming in and imposing, it’s about enabling.”

That sentiment, Williams says, is fundamental to the success of Sesame Street in its many international guises and to its promise for Northern Ireland.

“The crucial question facing us here and now after decades of division and distrust is, how can we find a way of living together as one community, not two. Sesame Street, with its emphasis on learning, on cooperation, on respect for yourself and others is a great vehicle to address those issues.”

For Rosenfeld, the success of the Sesame format is rooted in the notion of it being an experiment without end. “If we don’t look at it like that, then we risk feeling that we’ve cracked the code and produced a formula that works and can be applied to every situation. But children as consumers of media are changing, the media landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive and how parents look to television as an educational tool or not is changing, too.”

To which end, supporting the 15-minute episodes will be what Rosenfeld describes as “a robust website”, developed and managed by partners BBC Northern Ireland.

“We want the programmes to be the springboard for children to go off and find out more, to develop an interest in things they might not have considered,” adds Williams, “and, of course, to allow us to deal more expansively with the elements of the National Curriculum that underpin the programme itself.”

With the first series now in the can and the general response from the adults concerned encouraging - even the region’s deputy first minister Martin McGuinness has welcomed The Sesame Tree as “a huge step forward, complementing the political process” - all Williams has to do now is satisfy his target audience of three to six-year-olds.

“That’s the biggest hurdle we will have to clear. We have inserts from the Sesame archive in each show - sequences that we could all remember as favourites when we were children watching it ourselves, sequences that have stayed with us after 20 years and more. We’re hoping that in 30 years’ time, our viewers will be able to remember The Sesame Tree just as vividly and fondly.”

• The Sesame Tree launches on BBC2 Northern Ireland on April 5 and 6, 2008