Alison Hume: writing Summerhill

On the Writers' Guild website, Children's BAFTA winner Alison Hume explains how she came to write a TV drama about Summerhill school.

Dramatising the story of how a tiny progressive school took on David Blunkett’s disapproving education department in 1999 had been a separately but equally long held dream for both CBBC’s Jon East and Tiger Aspect’s Greg Bremnan. In 2006 the planets came into alignment and Summerhill was commissioned as a 4 x 30 minute drama for CBBC. I was presented with a court transcript as thick as a brick and quickly felt the dead-ish hand of responsibility settling on my shoulder.

I put the research aside, packed my swimming costume and caught the train down to the Suffolk coast from my home in York. Most of a day later I arrived at Summerhill School. The very first thing I saw were kids playing up in the trees. Up in the trees! I felt challenged and I wasn’t even through the front door.

Alison Hume (right) with Chae Eun Park, a Summerhillian who had a part in the drama