Animation UK Monthly Column: December 2011
November was a busy month for us and things are finally moving forward with emails and letters making their way around the government. The internal cogs of parliament are slowly turning and MPs are now beginning to hear our cause. I have met up with Don Foster and Vince Cable both of which were positive, and I will be seeing David Gauke – Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury along with Carl Hall from Parthenon this week, and George Osborne – Chancellor of the Exchequer in the New Year.
Ed Vaizey has continued his support and has written about us in his weekly email, which is great as it is keeping Animation UK fresh in people’s minds. Once more, he recently mentioned Animation UK in a speech he was giving at Westminster. I will be catching up with him in the New Year to discuss our next move.
Several articles have recently been published on the BBC and following one on ‘Aardman threatening to go overseas’, BBC Breakfast approached us for a feature on Animation UK. I contributed to this and it was aired on 16th November. A previous feature on BBC Breakfast proved to create some great coverage for us so fingers crossed this has a similar impact.
Despite this recent increase in support we do need to keep the pressure and awareness up and our biggest job at the moment is to apply pressure to the Treasury so we can start seeing some results. We have started a letter campaign which everyone can participate in and it would be great if you could; we have prepared a template you can use which you can find on our website here; http://www.animationuk.org/index.html
We also need as many votes as possible for our proposal (http://38degrees.uservoice.com/forums/78585-campaign-suggestions/suggestions/2394930-give-britain-s-animators-a-tax-credit-to-stop-our-) and if we get enough then other people may begin to campaign on our behalf. We have already had huge success so far and Mark Field MP is trying to get our campaign nominated by the site- we just need to get enough votes, so get voting!