Andrew Davenport was born on 10 June 1965 and is an English writer, puppeteer, producer, composer, and actor, specialising in creating television, music, and books for young children.
34 Facts About Andrew Davenport
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Andrew Davenport is known as co-creator and writer of Teletubbies and writer, voice artist and puppeteer of "Tiny" on Tots TV.
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Andrew Davenport is the creator, writer, and composer of both In the Night Garden.
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Andrew Davenport wrote all 50 episodes and composed all the music for the series.
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Andrew Davenport has been dubbed "the JK Rowling of the under fives" and "the king of kid's TV" following the extraordinary international success of Teletubbies and In the Night Garden.
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Andrew Davenport was born in Folkestone, Kent and grew up in Bromley.
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Andrew Davenport went to Hayes School where, at the age of 13, Davenport was inspired by Sir Jonathan Miller's TV series "The Body in Question" to be the first in his family to go to university, and to look for a subject that combined arts and sciences.
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Andrew Davenport was President of the UCL Drama Society in his final year, during which the society staged 32 productions in 30 term weeks.
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Andrew Davenport wrote and performed in experimental theatre between 1988 and 1994, with performing partner Kate France, whom he met at UCL.
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Andrew Davenport frequently worked with conceptual performance artist Gary Stevens.
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Andrew Davenport performed variously with France and Stevens at the Edinburgh and Brighton Festivals, London's ICA, Serpentine Gallery, Hayward Gallery, the British Art Show, National Review of Live Art, the Theatre de la Bastille in Paris, and the Yermolova Theatre in Moscow.
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In 1991, Andrew Davenport joined Ragdoll Productions as a puppeteer and co-writer on the double-BAFTA-winning series Tots TV, puppeteering and voicing the character of Tiny.
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Andrew Davenport co-wrote the series of 297 episodes with Tom's Puppeteer Robin Stevens.
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Anne Wood invited Andrew Davenport to join the company after seeing him perform in Gary Stevens' Animal at the CCA in Glasgow.
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Andrew Davenport went on to play a lead role in turning Ragdoll into a globally recognised, specialist preschool producer.
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Andrew Davenport was writer and line producer on Series 2 of the series Brum, and appeared in two episodes as The Big Town Robber.
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Andrew Davenport had been working on an idea for a set of characters based on spacemen, having noticed the toddler-like proportions and antics of astronauts in footage of the Moon landings.
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Andrew Davenport was invited by Anne Wood to further develop the characters in response to an invitation from the BBC to pitch a new preschool show.
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The BBC stipulated that young children should appear in the show, so Andrew Davenport placed TVs in the Teletubbies' tummies to solve the scale difference between the 'monster'-size Teletubbies and young children.
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Andrew Davenport co-created Teletubbies with Anne Wood, and wrote all of the 365 x 25 minute episodes.
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In 2002, Andrew Davenport wrote the BAFTA-winning series Teletubbies Everywhere.
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Andrew Davenport created the series and the characters, wrote all 100 episodes and composed music for all episodes of the double-BAFTA-winning In the Night Garden.
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In 2012, Andrew Davenport joined Elisabeth Murdoch's Shine Group as head of a new pre-school content division.
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Andrew Davenport teamed up with the University of Sheffield to create a study of children's play, using a toy house equipped with cameras and microphones.
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Andrew Davenport used the study to inform his development of Moon and Me, the story of a group of toy characters, brought to life by the Moon shining on their toy house.
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Andrew Davenport rejects contemporary CGI effects and animation methods, instead insisting on filming with real objects using rod puppets, vast model sets, over 500 miniature props, and stop motion animation to create the series entirely at toy-house scale, and in-camera.
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Andrew Davenport wrote all 50 episodes and composed all music for the series.
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Andrew Davenport has paid tribute to Postgate at the 2007 JM Barrie Awards, in a BBC documentary "Oliver Postgate: A Life in Small Films" and on Channel 4 News.
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Andrew Davenport's work has focused on children's natural instinct to play, and how specifically tailored content can engage that instinct effectively.
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Andrew Davenport listens to directors and actors on set and as the crew become more proficient with the filming techniques, Davenport writes more intricate scenes.
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Russell T Davies rates Andrew Davenport's writing style alongside Tom Stoppard and Samuel Beckett.
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Andrew Davenport has been called "one of the most heard composers on the planet" after composing all music and lyrics for In the Night Garden.
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Andrew Davenport's music has been performed by Michael Buble and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
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Andrew Davenport invited Buble to perform the song after seeing him sing the Igglepiggle song from In the Night Garden.