Coming up with amazing ideas is one of the hardest things in television. If you’re lucky, it could make you millions. If you’re not, the rejection letters will make you cry into your cornflakes. So how do you come up with the killer idea across the various genres? Is ideas generation a science or an art?

This course will help those who want to want to work full-time in development as well as those for whom ideas generations is an important part of their job, whether it’s as a researcher, producer or director.

Where do ideas come from?

• Science or Art?
• The 5 stages of development
• A brief history of successful TV formats and ideas and how they came about
• Lateral thinking: what exercises can I do to unlock my creativity?
• Understanding the commissioning brief
• Ideas generation across specific genres: documentary, specialist factual, factual entertainment and drama

Day 1: Seminar based with practical group exercises on how ideas are generated.

Day 2: Applying the knowledge from Day I to particular genres. This is a day of practical exercises and lateral thinking.

The course is delivered by Nicky Huggett. Nicky has been running Development teams for over six years at companies such as Rare Day, Popkorn TV and Windfall Films, covering neuroscience and animal autopsies to pest control and policing. Her true love is documentaries; as a Producer she was responsible for films such as The Murder Workers on Channel 4, which was nominated for a Grierson Award.