Children's TV writer visits York school

Alison Hume, who lives in Poppleton, is a parent governor at Burton Green School in Clifton and in her professional life is the writer of the children’s TV show Summerhill, for which she won a BAFTA in 2008.

Alison, who has a child in Year 6 at the school, held a workshop with Year 6 pupils last year when she was starting to research her latest programme, The Sparticle Mystery.

On Tuesday, Alison returned to the school to give pupils a peep at her new show before it goes out on TV next week.

She said: “I’m passionate about literacy and when we did the workshop last year I brought an executive producer from the BBC in London with me to talk to the children. We asked them to come up with ideas of what they would do if all the adults disappeared – which is the premise of The Sparticle Mystery. The children made films themselves which we then judged.

“I came back to the school on Tuesday because I wanted to give the children a chance to see the programme before it goes out on CBBC.”

Alison said the idea for the plot of The Sparticle Mystery came after she read coverage of the Large Hadron Collider in the press.

She said: “When I read about the Hadron Collider and all the worries at the time if something went wrong it fired my imagination. I love science fiction and one thing led to another.

“The Sparticle Mystery looks at what happens after an explosion in the world’s largest particle collider sends all the adults and anyone aged over 15 into another dimension.”

Burton Green head teacher Sally Taylor said: “This has been a hugely exciting venture for the school and we are very grateful to Alison. I don’t think the children realise quite what it means to have a BAFTA award winning writer talking to them. They know Alison as they see her in school and they just take it for granted.”

The Sparticle Mystery will go out in 13 episodes starting on Monday at 6.20pm on CBBC and then run from Monday to Thursday for three weeks.