ITV crime series Broadchurch may have earned itself many fans for its tight scriptwriting and top notch acting, but greeting card publisher and artist, Angela Hewitt has taken issue with the programme’s production company for featuring one of her designs in a scene without her agreement.
The Times, newspaper yesterday (August 21) and the Mail on Sunday and Sunday Mirror on Sunday (August 20) all picked up on the story that the talented founder and creative driver behind Angela Hewitt Designs, was seeking £10,000 damages for copyright infringement and breach of moral rights from the ITV production company, Kudos Productions, for using a piece of her artwork without prior consent in the background to a storyline which involved a rape case.
Angela’s painting of a cockerel was filmed in the house of Ed Burnett, a rape suspect played by Lenny Henry in the third series of Broadchurch. Angela was quoted in the Mail on Sunday as saying she was “disgusted and appalled” to see the painting shown in such a context. “I jumped out of my seat,” she told the Sunday tabloid. “I was very angry that the programme-makers hadn’t got in touch with me. If they had told me the context of the programme, I would have said ‘absolutely not’.”
Angela told PG Buzz that seeing the use of her artwork without prior consent was an abuse of section 31 of the Copyright Act, so she contacted Kudos asking for damages. “I originally asked for £10,000 a) To waken them up. b) This was a massive production that would go worldwide making them £millions so it was a fair request. I believe that it was copyright theft because I sent them and ITV cease and desist letters and they continued to broadcast. I believe they continued because they knew I would not have the funds to take the matter to the high court.”
Explaining how the matter has escalated into the national press, Angela said that after making contact with Kudos she was offered £1,500, which she rejected. Instead she suggested a slightly larger sum of £3,800 “mainly to cover my legal costs which were beginning to run away – or I would prefer to go public. After four weeks I had no response so I cancelled my offer and went public.”
Sharing her advice to others in the greeting card and artistic world who may find themselves in a similar position or are cajoled into a poor licensing agreement, Angela urges them to stand firm for a fair deal. “Don’t cheapen yourself with pathetic licensing agreements. It’s about time licensors paid more and stopped treating artists as fodder. (It is the images that makes these companies the money). Artists who accept poor payments are not doing us any favours.”
Angela, a very positive person by nature has earned the friendship and respect of retail stockists of her cards and licensed products.
On her website she shares how she feels about painting pictures for a living: “I feel incredibly lucky and sometimes it’s as if a genie has jumped into my body and given me a precious gift that he may, without notice, take back at any time. Consequently I have this desperate urge to take advantage of this piece of luck while I can. I now paint around 2,500 pictures a year.”
As to her venture into greeting cards, she recalls how it started by her feeling so hard up that she could not afford to buy her own Christmas cards so decided to make her own and try to sell them. “I painted a selection [of card designs] of Christmas trees, crackers and holly wreaths. I showed them to a friend who said I should try selling them at a Christmas charity fair. So I booked a table for £5.00 at the local hall. I sold all the cards. I went home and painted some more and sold them again the next week. In the end I was so busy painting and selling cards that I ended up having to buy some printed cards to send to friends.”
This happy fortune inspired Angela to turn her attentions to painting everyday cards. “I chose to produce three sets of four cards, apples and pears, farm animals, and vegetables. I sent a selection to the Country Living magazine and the Saturday Telegraph magazine. Country Living loved them and did a tiny feature in its Emporium page. The Saturday Telegraph also did a feature on its Easter shopping page. Suddenly I was on the phone taking orders. So that is how it all took off. Very quickly in fact, just a matter of months.”
