Patricia Edgar | |
|---|---|
 Dr. Patricia Edgar, pictured in 2008 | |
| Born | Patricia May Edgar |
| Education | Stanford University, La Trobe University, The University of Melbourne |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouse | Don Edgar |
(Dr.) Patricia May Edgar AM is an Australian author, television producer, educator and media scholar best known as the founding director of the Australian Children's Television Foundation. [1]
Edgar was born in Mildura, Victoria, and moved to California in the 1960s with her husband, author and social researcher Dr. Don Edgar) and their two children to study for an MA in Communication at Stanford University. On their return to Australia, Edgar joined the staff of La Trobe University as the inaugural Head of the Centre for the Study of Media and Communication.
She introduced the first courses on film and television production and cinema studies at an Australian University. At La Trobe she also completed a PhD. [2]
Dr. Patricia Edgar served on several government committees, such as the Australian Broadcasting Control Board which she was appointed to by Gough Whitlam's government in 1975. [3] Whilst part of this committee she was instrumental in formulating codes for children's television for the first time. [3] She was also involved in the Australian National Commission of UNESCO, Film Victoria, the Council of the Australian Film and Television School, the Victorian Government's Board of CIRCIT Ltd (Centre for International Research on Communication and Information Technologies) and the Victorian Post-Secondary Education Commission. [3] Dr Edgar also served as an Associate Member of the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal's Inquiry into Violence on Television from 1988 to 1989. [3]
Egar was Deputy Chairman of the Australian Film Finance Corporation Limited between 1988 and 1995. [3] Additionally, she chaired the ACMI Foundation from 2004 to 2006 and is the founding chair of the Breast Cancer Network of Australia which she served as chairman of from 1998 to 2009. [3]
Dr. Edgar was the founding director of the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF). [2] Over twenty years, the ACTF produced 174 hours of television drama and won more than 100 national and international awards including an International Emmy, two Logies, four AFI Awards, a Japan Prize, a Banff Rockie Award, the Prix Jeunesse and a Grand Jury Prize. The ACTF also made co-productions with the BBC, Disney and Revcom. [4] While she was director of the ACTF she produced a number of outstanding children's television programs for all ages which included Round the Twist, Lift Off, The Genie From Down Under, Touch the Sun, Winners, Kaboodle, Crash Zone, L'il Elvis Jones and the Truckstoppers, Noah and Saskia, Kaboodle, Yolngu Boy and Kahootz. [3]
In 1995 she formed and hosted the first World Summit on Television and Children. This Summit was held in Melbourne, Australia and was attended by more than 600 delegates from 70 countries around the world. She is currently Deputy Chair of the World Summit on media for Children Foundation, but served as Chair for seventeen years.
Recently, she became an ambassador for theNational Ageing Research Institute.
Patricia Edgar is the author of fifteen books. Much of her research and writing has focused on children and television. Her books about television and the media include Children and Screen Violence, Under Five in Australia, Media She (with Hilary McPhee), The Politics of the Press and recently a memoir Bloodbath: A Memoir of Australian Television, which prompted Phillip Adams to write "I would regard Patricia Edgar as a sort of human tank. Patricia is a sort of Centurion in her abilities to kick down doors and push walls over. She is annoying, irritating, relentless, drives people mad, but she gets things done".[ citation needed ]
Patricia Edgar has a BA and a BEd from the University of Melbourne, a Master of Arts from Stanford University, and a PhD from La Trobe University. [3] In 1994 the University of Western Australia awarded her an honorary Doctor of Letters (Hon DLitt). [3] In May of 2018, LaTrobe University awarded her a Doctor of Letters (honoris causa). [3]
In 1986, she was appointed Member of the General Division of the Order of Australia for her services to children's television and the media. [3] In 1988, she was a finalist at the Bicentennial BHP Awards for the Pursuit of Excellence. [3] In 1992 on World Communications Day she was given the Award of the Archbishop of Sydney Citation. [3] She was a finalist in the Victorian of the Year Awards for 1995. [3] In the same year, she was awarded for her outstanding contribution to children at the World Summit on Television and Children. [3] The following year she was chosen as a she was given the Award of the Archbishop of Sydney Citation. [3]
She was awarded the Australian College of Education medal in 1998 and an Achiever Award from the Committee for Melbourne in 2001. [3] She received both of these awards as recognition for her exceptional contribution to using the medium of television as a form of education. [3]
Additionally, in 2001, the ACTF was awarded the Youth TV Prize at the 18th International Scientific Audio-visual Conference - Image and Science in Paris as recognition for the quality of work the ACTF had produced. [3] She was named on the Victorian Honor Roll of Women "Dr Patricia Edgar, AM (1981 - Founding Director of the innovative Australian Children's Television Foundation)" which recognises women of achievement that have made a difference in Victoria, Australia or internationally. [3] In 2002, the Australian Film Institute presented her with the Australian Film Institute Longford Life Achievement Award, the highest accolade the AFI can bestow. [3] In 2003, the Governor General awarded her with the Centenary Medal to mark Dr Edgar's contribution "to children's television, education programs". [3] Finally, in 2007, she was awarded the Dromkeen Medal for her role in advancing children's literature. [5]
Round the Twist is an Australian children's comedy drama television series which follows the supernatural adventures of the Twist family, who leave their conventional residence to live in a lighthouse, in the fictional coastal town of Port Naranda.
State Library Victoria (SLV) is the state library of Victoria, Australia. Located in Melbourne, it was established in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, making it Australia's oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in the world. It is also Australia's busiest public library and, as of 2023, the third busiest library globally.
Sky Trackers is a 26-part science-based Australian children's television adventure series, and a stand-alone children's television movie of the same name, which feature the adventures of children who live at space-tracking stations in Australia. Both series and telemovie were created by Jeff Peck and Tony Morphett, and executive-produced by Patricia Edgar on behalf of the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF).
Noah and Saskia is a 13-episode TV program initiated, developed and produced by Patricia Edgar for the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF) and the BBC as she stepped down after 20 years as Founding Director of the ACTF. The 13 x 24-minute drama series involves an Australian teenage girl, Saskia, and her internet-based relationship with Noah, a teenage boy living in the United Kingdom. The two characters project their ideal selves to each other in a virtual world, and in the process get a little closer to reaching their ideals in the real one. The show is about the power of someone's essence and how someone can touch you from 10,000 miles away, and change your whole life. Noah & Saskia speaks directly to today's young people about the technologies which are changing the way we communicate.
"I wanted one more crack at producing the type of television I had always believed in; not a formulaic soap-style series; not a co-produced mid-Pacific blancmange, but something that really spoke to adolescents about the issues that were on their minds," Patricia Edgar, Bloodbath: a memoir of Australian Television, pg.399. "The Internet was the place to set much of the action as this allowed for a modern, contemporary story, which would be new territory for drama. The other appeal of online chat spaces was that they give the characters opportunities to express themselves in multiple ways. The Net is a space where young people are much more at home than their parents and increasingly it will be their world", Patricia Edgar.
Dr. Donald E. Edgar is the Foundation Director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Under his leadership the Institute had a profound influence on the Government of Australia regarding family policy, family and work, welfare policy and family law. He continues to contribute to Australian thinking in these areas through his own consulting practise and as an occasional columnist and commentator in the Australian media, particularly The Age and The Australian.
The Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF) is a national non-profit children's media production and policy hub.
Lift Off was an Australian children's television series that was developed and produced by Patricia Edgar and broadcast on ABC Television from 1992 until the series ended in 1995. Each episode featured a live action storyline about a group of young children, and the problems they encountered with growing up, their parents, and various other social issues. Episodes would also feature segments of short animation, puppetry and documentary segments, as well as various songs, stories, and word games. Aimed at 3- to 8-year-olds, the series was linked with the school curricula through the Curriculum Corporation of Australia. The different episodes used stories and locations to explore subjects such as jealousy, loneliness and anger. The puppet characters were designed by illustrator Terry Denton and were constructed by the sculptor Ron Mueck.
The Genie from Down Under is a children's comedy television series. It was a co-production between the ACTF, the BBC and the ABC from 1996 to 1998. The Genie from Down Under is based on an idea from Steve J Spears which was developed into a series concept with a 'Round The Twist' flavour. Esben Storm, Steve Spears and a team of writers work-shopped the storylines. Patricia Edgar was looking for a new idea for a comedy series which would capture the debate about Australia becoming a Republic - a significant issue in Australia at the time. She invited a few writers to submit original ideas then chose the concept submitted by Steve Spears to workshop its potential. She asked Esben Storm, who had been the co-author and Director of the successful Round the Twist series to lead the development workshop.
Peter Holmes à Court is an Australian businessman.
Li'l Elvis and the Truckstoppers is an animated musical children's television series and the Australian Children's Television Foundation's (ACTF's) first joint venture under the Distinctly Australian Program introduced by the Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating. The Director of the ACTF, Dr. Patricia Edgar, selected Peter Viska's character Li'l Elvis to design and co-produce the ACTF's first long-form 26-episode-series animation. As an original concept, not commissioned from overseas or based on an adaption of a classic story, production of the series on this scale was a massive undertaking for the Australian animation industry. With Li'l Elvis, an $11.5 million project, the ACTF opened up a new overseas market in partnership with France 2 and France Animation, a French production company, and Ravensburger, a German distributor, with the financial participation of Centre national de la cinématographie. A team of 90 animators and artists worked for 18 months including 39 trainees were employed on the production in support roles.
Yolngu Boy is a 2001 Australian coming-of-age film directed by Stephen Maxwell Johnson, produced by Patricia Edgar, Gordon Glenn, Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Mandawuy Yunupingu, and starring Sean Mununggurr, John Sebastian Pilakui, and Nathan Daniels. Yolngu Boy is based around three Aboriginal teenage boys linked by ceremony, kinship and a common dream-to become great Yolngu hunters, in a remote community at Yirrkala in North-East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. The feature film traces the metaphorical journey of the three young Aboriginal teenagers caught in a collision between the modern world and traditional Aboriginal culture where they hunt wild animals in the morning using spears and play football while listening to hip hop rap music in the afternoon. The project involved a significant number of community members in the cast and crew of the film.
Maureen Wheeler is a Northern Irish and Australian businesswoman, who co-founded the travel publisher Lonely Planet with her husband, Tony Wheeler.
Crash Zone is an Australian children's science fiction television series which aired on the Seven Network from 13 February 1999 to 25 August 2001. It was produced by Australian Children's Television Foundation, in association with the Disney Channel, and ran for 26 episodes. The series stars five high school students, "high-tech whiz kids" of varied backgrounds, who are hired by the president of the Catalyst software company to save her failing business. The premise of the series was unique in that it was one of the first series to examine the early use of the internet as well as the video game industry and artificial intelligence.
Marilyn Lee Lake, is an Australian historian known for her work on the effects of the military and war on Australian civil society, the political history of Australian women and Australian racism including the White Australia Policy and the movement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander human rights. She was awarded a personal chair in history at La Trobe University in 1994. She has been elected a Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities and a Fellow, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Touch the Sun is a series of television films commissioned by Patricia Edgar for the Australian Children's Television Foundation. It was to be the ACTF's project for the Australian Bicentenary celebrations in 1988. The Australian Bicentennial Authority named Touch the Sun as the Bicentenary official children's series for 1988. Edgar's plan was to locate stories in every state in Australia showing the diversity of the Australian landscape. It was directed, written and produced by some of the top film and tv personnel in Australia. Patricia Edgar was Executive Producer of the show and it was backed by the ABC, Australian Film Commission, the New South Wales Film Corporation, the South Australian Film and Television Financing Fund, the South Australian Film Corporation, Film Victoria and the French distribution company Revcom International. National Trustees agreed to act as investor representatives for Touch the Sun in 1986 and the series was offered to the Australian Television networks for telecast in 1988. The $7.5 million necessary for production of this unique children’s series for the Bicentennial year was fully subscribed by 30 June 1987. The ABC paid $2 million for the Australian rights to Touch the Sun, the most the ABC had ever spent to acquire the rights to a program.
Elizabeth "Ella" Finkel AM is a multi-award-winning Australian science journalist, author and communicator. A former biochemist, she has been broadcast on ABC Radio National, and written for publications such as Science, The Lancet, Nature Medicine, The Bulletin, New Scientist, The Age and The Monthly. In 2005 Finkel co-founded the popular science magazine COSMOS, served as Editor in Chief from 2013 to 2018 and she remains its Editor at Large. In 2016 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her science communication work and philanthropy. In 2019 Finkel was awarded a Doctor of Laws honoris causa from Monash University and the Medal of the Australian Society for Medical Research. She now serves as a Vice Chancellor's Fellow at La Trobe University and on advisory committees for La Trobe University Press, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) and the Melbourne Zoo.
Clare Alice Wright, is an American Australian historian, author and broadcaster. She is a professor of history at La Trobe University, and was the winner of the 2014 Stella Prize. Wright has worked as a political speechwriter, university lecturer, historical consultant, and radio and television broadcaster and podcaster.
Hyllus Noel Maris was an Aboriginal Australian activist, poet and educator. Maris was a Yorta Yorta woman. She was a key figure in the Aboriginal rights movement of the 1970s and 1980s, a poet, an educator and an award-winning scriptwriter.
Kaboodle is a 13-part anthology television series which includes animation, puppetry, and live action and was produced by the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF) that ran on ABC Television from 1987 to 1990. Kaboodle 2 was a follow-on series which provided another six half-hour episodes of innovative television drama for the under-tens. Kaboodle 2, however, was fully animated and instead of being an ‘anthology’ series of many short dramas, all of which are different, this season had regular characters in every episode. The show commenced screening on the Seven Network across Australia in April 1990.
Winners is an Australian children's television anthology series conceived and produced for the ACTF by its founding director, Patricia Edgar. It first screened on Network 10 in 1985 as part of the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal's newly implemented C classified drama quota. It featured eight self-contained telemovies and stories. Patricia Edgar was confident that Winners would be a landmark in the development of quality children's television and that it would go on to set the standard nationally and internationally for future children's productions. More Winners is the second season of the series, first screened on ABC in 1990. It featured six self-contained telemovies and stories.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |