Making sustainable production a Common Story!
Photo credit: Vivienne Bailey Photography
15 December 2025
The Create Central is delighted to congratulate Common Story on winning two prestigious awards at the Royal Television Society Midlands Awards, held on Friday 12 December 2025.
The young West Midlands company took home Best Children’s Programme and the inaugural Sustainability Award, proudly developed by Create Central in partnership with RTS Midlands, for its CBeebies factual entertainment series I Can Do It You Can Too (Series 2).
Commissioned by BBC Children’s and broadcast on CBeebies, I Can Do It You Can Too celebrates young contributors by placing their skills, confidence and creativity at the heart of the storytelling. Across 40 episodes, the series encourages children to try new activities while embedding sustainability into every stage of its production — an approach recognised by the RTS Midlands with its new Sustainability Category.
The awards were collected by Common Story’s production and editorial teams alongside presenter Aaron Roach Bridgeman, whose warmth and enthusiasm have been central to the programme’s success.
Ed Shedd, Chair of Create Central, said “Huge congratulations to Common Story, the well-deserved winners for I Can Do It You Can Too. Their work powerfully demonstrates how high-quality production can be achieved while putting sustainability at the heart of the process. This award marks an important step in recognising and celebrating productions that are actively shaping a more responsible and forward-thinking screen industry in the West Midlands.”
Accepting the Sustainability Award on the night, Common Story Co-Founder and Executive Producer Beth Newell said: "As content makers we’re all involved in creative problem solving, and when we slow down just enough to ask “do we need this?” or “is there another way?”, we don’t just reduce impact - we often find more thoughtful, more collaborative, often more inventive solutions too. It’s about small everyday choices - how we travel, what we eat, what we buy, what we reuse, what we throw away – that add up to making a real difference.”
Founded in January 2020, Common Story has quickly established itself as a bold new voice in regional television, specialising in inclusive and joyful children’s content and championing stories from across the Midlands. The double win marks the company’s first RTS Midlands Awards and caps off a landmark year that also saw it secure a place on the BBC’s Small Indie Fund in collaboration with the CBBC drama team.
Create Central is proud to support initiatives that recognise innovation, sustainability and excellence in the screen sector and congratulates all winners and nominees celebrated at this year’s RTS Midlands Awards.