What can the animation industry do to fight the climate crisis? At a time when all our working practices are changing, we came together with animation industry professionals, academics, heads of studios and climate change experts and explored how we can all work greener.
Speakers from BAFTA Albert, Julie’s Bicycle and Be Inspired Films joined us for short, focused online talks to cut through the noise and tell us easy ways to make our animation practice more environmentally sustainable. Then we opened up the conversation digitally to learn from each other and talk about how we can work together to make a difference, in virtual breakout discussions led by innovative facilitators PDR.
WATCH THE TALKS
GET INVOLVED WITH THE WORKSHOP
During the Climate Assembly we opened up the conversation digitally, so everyone could learn from each other and talk about how we can work together to make a difference, in virtual breakout discussions led by innovative facilitators PDR. Each group worked through their animation production process, identifying potential environmental impacts and ways we could work greener, and the facilitators led, visualised and captured the discussion using digital whiteboard tool Miro.
You can complete the digital whiteboard yourself, or with your team or your collaborators – download the digital whiteboard as a pdf here. You can also see the completed completed Miro boards here from the five different breakout discussions about how we can make the animation process green and how each stage of production has effects on the environment.
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT OUR FACILITATORS & SPEAKERS
LUCY LATHAM
Arts Council England and Policy Programmes Lead at
is a charity that supports the creative community to act on climate change and environmental sustainability. They believe that the creative community is uniquely placed to transform the conversation around climate change and translate it into action.
RAVINOL CHAMBERS
Producer, Director + Founder of
BE INSPIRED FILMS
believe telling better stories will create a better world. They join us to discuss storytelling for change, and how the process of becoming certified as a B Corp has helped shape their business.
EMMA PEDDIE
Sustainability Consultant at
are the authority on environmental sustainability for film + TV. Founded in 2011 and governed by an industry consortium, they support everyone working in film and TV to understand their opportunities to create positive environmental change.
LAUREN ORME
Festival Director
CARDIFF ANIMATION FESTIVAL
was due to run 2-5 April 2020. Having postponed most of our activity, we wanted to bring this event online as we felt the time is right to discuss greening our practices and stories.
FURTHER INFORMATION
B Corporations are a new type of business that balance purpose and profit. Ravinol from Be Inspired Films talked about his experiences of becoming certified as a B Corp at our event. Here's more on the B Corp certification process.
BAFTA Albert have adapted their training programme so that they can deliver it to you as an online webinar during the UK lockdown. Their training is free and they're offering two different sessions, one for people working behind the scenes in production and one for those writing content for the screen. You can sign up to one or both of the sessions.
For a lot of us in animation, our main carbon cost is energy. The Albert Creative Energy project offers group purchasing of renewable energy to lower costs. Albert compare energy providers and analyse who currently has the greenest offering – this year they’re using Good Energy as the provider for Albert Creative Energy. Buff Motion have made an animated video explaining the scheme.
As Emma mentioned in her talk, walking or cycling are among the most planet-friendly ways to get to work – but if that's not possible, schemes like Liftshare are another way to reduce your commuting emissions as well as your costs.
As Emma from BAFTA Albert said at the event, "you can't manage what you don't measure". To help you measure your climate impact, here's Albert’s Carbon Calculator and information about their Production Certification for TV.
For an animation company's take on carbon training, check out Chicken Fruit’s blog post on their BAFTA Albert training, and the pledges they've made to reduce their carbon footprint.
Do The Green Thing is a website using creativity to tackle climate change, which Emma mentioned in her talk. Featuring Constellations, an animated short by Steven Qua.
Julie’s Bicycle also have an Environmental Calculator to help you measure your impact – here it is, along with information about Julie's Bicycle's Creative Green certification.
To see how one animation company made their production carbon positive, check out Bumpybox’s article on greening S2 of My Petsaurus.
Here's Albert’s Planet Placement guide to creating world-changing content and “dragging the future into the present”, including the Subtitles to Save the World report featuring stats comparing TV mentions of climate vs cats and cake!
Lucy from Julie's Bicycle mentioned MAST as a case study on climate collaboration – they’re a group of Manchester companies who have come together to make change within their organisations, contribute to their city’s environmental strategy and are now translating their learning and experiences in other cities across Europe.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
We've created a new online hub for knowledge-sharing, support and inspiration, speicifcally for the animation, games and VFX industries. We want to build a community of people within our industries who are working together to make climate positive changes. We'd love you to be part of it. Join us.
