The contributors to this report – by taking the survey, participating in the round table discussion, or being interviewed for the profiles – are engaged in extraordinarily diverse activities, across and between the arts and the creative media industries. They make music videos, independent films, commercials, apps, games and interactive installations.
Digital technology and the explosion of screen-based culture mean that we all encounter ‘animation’ in different forms many times every day.
This diversity is a fundamental strength, and whilst we’re doing quite different things from each other, we understand these respective activities and that there are connections. As a sector, the challenge is to be able to communicate the value and importance of what we do to others, and in that, the term ‘animation’ itself can hinder as much as it helps.
The animation industry’ is an easy phrase to use, because we know each other. When we started Nexus in 1997, we were just at the end of the real sense of the cottage industry; it wasn’t a proper thing. It was always the same people and it was a very tight little community. It feels to me like that’s just completely gone and it’s a much more complex area that we all work in."
Chris O’Reilly, founder and co-director, Nexus Productions
In our round table discussion we considered what term might best encapsulate the creative practice that we are engaged in: animation that isn’t children’s television and feature films.
What we do is independent, cultural, innovative, adult, critically engaged; we recognised that we often have to describe what we do differently according to context.
In this report we’ve used ‘creative animation’ as a default term – without wanting to suggest that other forms of animation are not ‘creative’. What the Accelerate programme aims to support is those engaged in the creative application of animation craft skills.
That’s the thing that is enduring – craft, and that in a sense that’s really all that animation is. When we’re talking about animation industry, we’re talking about the craft of animation being applied into different areas. And there are areas that it can be applied to that it hasn’t been yet.
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It feels to me that one of the interesting things that Accelerate is able to do, and that Animate’s history has always been about as well, is supporting people to development of their animation craft skills at a high end, and to be the leading edge of animation craft skills. Then you don’t get into an area of defining whether it’s art, or not, or independent, or experimental, or avant-garde or whatever, all those phrases. I think the craft is the
intrinsic thing."
Chris O’Reilly, founder and co-director, Nexus Productions