Next week The Children’s Media Conference gathers people working with developing, producing and distributing content to children for a three-day programme in Sheffield. The conference is in its 20th edition in 2023, and the varied programme illustrates how all platforms are now in play when thinking about children’s media.
This article explores the advantages of ‘structured industry workshops’ as a methodology for obtaining nuanced empirical data about the practices and ‘behind the scenes’ workings of national screen agencies, organizations, institutions and stakeholders. The article argues that structured industry workshops with industry informants in the media industries have five major methodological benefits. The workshops facilitate access to and interest from elite or expert informants who can otherwise be hard to attract; they counter the risk of spin and ‘corporate scripts; they provide a valuable forum for not only finding out what practitioners think, but also how they discuss and engage with other practitioners; they can be a pathway to industry and policy change as well as future academic inquiry; and finally, structured industry workshops can help establish a platform for sustained dialogue and industry-academy collaborations, with genuine knowledge exchange and co-production as well as potential for impact.