Channel 4 has a history of producing engaging Arts programming, including popular series and highly distinctive single films. The department′s output includes Operatunity and How Music Works to The Mona Lisa Curse, Hunger and The Arbor.

Ideas should be contemporary, provocative and should feel like a creative expression of being alive today. By contrast, producers should avoid ideas that are formulaic, polite and tethered to biography and history. Remember, arts television does not just have to be about the arts it can also be art as long as it has the potential to connect with a broad audience.

A simple checklist of our priorities would include: art stunts and spectacle with a purpose; popular returnable series on arts and culture; new work commissioned especially for television and ideas for the next generation of presenters or ′faces′. These will preferably be credible practitioners with something to say. To prevent producers from developing in areas that are not a priority we tend to avoid: straight art history, conventional biographies, straightforward arts coverage or ′proscenium arch′ performance where an event is simply recorded.

On the More4 channel we are interested in performance films and projects that can capture innovative process. These would normally be high end singes like The Arbor and Cave of Forgotten Dreams or landmark series like the upcoming Story of Film. For financial reasons, our More 4 output tends to be co-produced and producers should give thought to other sources of funding.