The BFI Aardman Animation Development Lab, launched on 3 October, will offer support and professional, hands-on experience to emerging talent with a passion for creating animated family films. With £1,000,000 of Lottery funding, it will provide funding for up to two years, to three filmmakers or filmmaker teams (writers, directors, producers) to develop their projects with dedicated development support through the Lab.

The programme was flagged in the BFI’s Film Forever five year plan, announced in 2012, although Aardman’s involvement didn’t seem explicit at the time. As we said back then, three teams over two years doesn’t seem a lot, but more of a concern for AAUK members might be that the model seems to simply replicate the live action development model and also suggests that Aardman is the only show in town (or the UK..) for animated features. As AAUK knows…our members include innovative and capable studios who are already nurturing UK animation writing and directing talent, but are effectively excluded from this programme.

[A small group of AAUK members met with the BFI Film Fund back in 2012, and AAUK was contacted as part of a consultation on animated feature development – but that was after the Film Forever announcement, and we’re not aware of any other consultation with our part of the animation sector by either BFI or Arts Council England. If they’ve been in touch with any members, we’d love to hear about the discussions..]