Accelerate Animation: Responding to the Creative Animation Sector’s Development Needs
Animate Projects, a charity that champions independent animation, today publishes Accelerate Animation, a report that maps the changing landscape of contemporary creative animation and its practitioners. The report is intended to inform a programme of development support for independent, creative animators working across a broad range of cultural and commercial practice but also calls for public policy and strategic support for the sector.
It includes the findings of survey asking animators and producers about development needs, and profiles of 22 animators, collectives and studios, indicating the different ways in which the sector is now organising itself and how animators are working across arts and creative industries.
Gary Thomas, director of Animate Projects, said: “This is about animation as a creative cultural and economic force – all the things beyond children’s television.”
Animators identified networking, skills sharing and advocacy as immediate priorities. They are locally connected, but the sector lacks a national framework and voice, and the lack of public policy, strategy and investment for the sector makes it isolated and struggling to sustain or develop.
Alan Davey, Chief Executive of Arts Council England, has said:
“The Arts Council is committed to supporting animation and the Accelerate Animation report which will help to inform how we will work together with the BFI to further support animators in both development, production networking and knowledge sharing.”
As one response to the survey put it: “The dots need to be joined. Until they are, independent, thriving animation has no hope in the UK”.
The Accelerate Animation report can be found at accelerateanimation.com