Mod­er­a­tors

Vanes­sa Chap­man is an inter­na­tion­al media exec­u­tive, whose more than 25 years in the media, has spanned all plat­forms. With proven expe­ri­ence in con­tent and busi­ness strat­e­gy; fundrais­ing and invest­ment, she heads up VJC Media, a cre­ative and busi­ness agency that works with inter­na­tion­al broad­cast­ers, media com­pa­nies, ani­ma­tion stu­dios, brands, investors and cre­ators. She is Direc­tor of a num­ber of media com­pa­nies and is on the board of The Cen­tu­ri­ons, a net­work­ing group for pro­fes­sion­als, pre­dom­i­nant­ly in the media, dig­i­tal and gam­ing space.

An award-win­ning Jour­nal­ist, Vanes­sa began her broad­cast­ing career with the BBC before join­ing Lon­don Week­end Tele­vi­sion (LWT). In the late 90s, she was con­troller of Children’s and Fam­i­ly Pro­grammes for the ITV Net­work. She went on to help devel­op the strat­e­gy for The LEGO Company’s entry into the glob­al tele­vi­sion and movie busi­ness, sub­se­quent­ly being appoint­ed Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the TV and Film Com­pa­ny, Cre­ate TV and Film.

John Lomas-Bul­li­vant is the Founder of Kick­back Media a Chil­dren’s and YA Sto­ry­world Pro­duc­er. Kick­back Media devel­ops high con­cept, genre based sto­ry­worlds for ani­ma­tion, live action and pub­lish­ing. Kick­back works exclu­sive­ly with new fic­tion authors and devel­ops orig­i­nal projects to full pub­lish­ing man­u­script stage cre­at­ing orig­i­nal and immer­sive sto­ry­worlds. Kickback‘s first sto­ry­world, The 21% Mon­ster Tril­o­gy, writ­ten by Peter Can­ning, will be pub­lished by Usborne Books in July 2022. while The Kringlset Chron­i­cles is start­ing devel­op­ment as a Christ­mas fea­ture film. John Lomas-Bul­li­vant has over 25 years’ expe­ri­ence work­ing in children’s media with expe­ri­ence gained at Senior Exec­u­tive lev­el at Blooms­bury Pub­lish­ing – Direc­tor of IP & Brand Devel­op­ment, TV-Loon­land – Direc­tor of Pro­grammes, Pear­son Tele­vi­sion – Head of Ani­ma­tion and HiT Enter­tain­ment – Head of Devel­op­ment & Co-Productions.

With over 20 years’ expe­ri­ence in the licens­ing and kids’ enter­tain­ment busi­ness, Cristi­na has a back­ground in chil­dren’s con­tent devel­op­ment, licens­ing, busi­ness devel­op­ment, PR and B2B events organisation.

Tasked by Bolog­naFiere to build an enter­tain­ment and licens­ing sec­tion, she was instru­men­tal in launch­ing the Bologna Licens­ing Trade Fair in 2008. She is pub­lish­er of Licens­ing Mag­a­zine, an inter­na­tion­al lead­ing pub­li­ca­tion, and she over­sees the B2B pro­gramme of Car­toons on the Bay Festival.