Animate Projects denied Arts Council England Portfolio status

Animate Projects is sorry to announce that its application for Arts Council England's National portfolio funding from 2012 was unsuccessful, because there are ‘other arts organisations whose contribution fits better into the national picture’.

As we announced in January, our application to Arts Council England’s Grants for the arts programme for 2011-2012 funding was also rejected. However, we were encouraged to resubmit and we are pleased that this application was successful. So, we can continue to deliver a programme of online exhibitions over the next year.

We would like to say a very big thank to the many people who expressed their support; we will be exploring all possibilities that might enable us to continue to support animators, artists and their audiences..

We send commiserations to other colleagues who were unsuccessful and our congratulations to those that made it into the Portfolio.

Competition: win a copy of the exclusive CUJO PRIMITIVE

To mark the UK DVD release of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, we are pleased to offer three copies of the Primitive issue of CUJO as prizes.

CUJO is ‘a magazine and a guide to the imaginary’. It’s free, published in Italy, distributed by hand, published in a numbered edition of only 1000 - and available only in ‘personal places that the artist loves and that somehow represent him’, spread around the world. It is not available in the UK.

Find out more about CUJO here

You can buy the Primitive DVD at Amazon here.

For a chance to win a copy of CUJO: Primitive, we want you to tell us three famous people or animals you would like to have been in your past lives. Entry through Twitter - tweet your 3 names followed by #CUJOPRIMITIVE

The three trinities that intrigue us most win a copy of CUJO. Tweet before noon, 1 April 2011. Our decisions are final!

Uncle Boonmee.. and CUJO PRIMITIVE are part of the PRIMITIVE projects, as are the short films Phantoms of Nabua (which you can see here) and A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (see it here)

Lapse: online exhibition

"The technology [work with 3D, inverted camera position, subliminal techniques] and heavily mediated image allows the viewer to look at a slightly altered and dislocated version of the world that calls into question our daily relationship with the environments that we have created and engage with." Helen Sloan, Lapse 2011

Our latest online exhibition, Lapse, showcases the work of five artists who explore the possibilities of time-lapse techniques, including Inger Lise Hansen who made an intoxicating time-lapse work for AnimateTV in 2006.

We could also have included from the Animate Archive - the enigmatic landscapes of Cobra Mist by Emily Richardson, and also Sunset Strip by Kayla Parker, which although it isn't strictly a time-lapse technique is similar to Alistair Ruff's exhibited works in its use of a strict system based process to condense 365 sunsets into one animated work.

We'd like to know what experimental time-lapse works you've seen recently that have made you see the world anew - please share your suggestions via the comments box below and include URLs so we can check out the work.

Animate and ACE

We'd like to thank people very much indeed for all the supportive comments. We have been encouraged by Arts Council England to make a resubmission to Grants for the arts, and that's gone in. It is for a substantially reduced programme, but their support would allow us to continue, and to work on fundraising from other sources for projects.

We'll keep you posted. And thanks again.

Arts Council Axes Animate

We are very sorry to announce that Animate is likely to close down at the end of March 2011, following Arts Council England’s decision not to fund our 2011 programme.

Animate began in 1990 as an Arts Council/Channel 4 scheme and has been supported by the Arts Council England continuously for 21 years.

We set up Animate Projects four years ago, following the sudden death of Dick Arnall. animateprojects.org is a unique resource, with more than 140 films, many by key figures in British animation, including 11 British Animation Awards winners and five BAFTA nominations, as well as interviews, essays and background production materials.

We are very proud of the work that we have been able to support, and would like to thank all the animators, artists, filmmakers, writers, and partners that we’ve worked with over the years, and to everyone who has taken an interest in our work.

Our programme continues, with new works online, until March, and we hope to keep the website live for some time after that.

Whilst we are exploring options for beyond March, we would appreciate any expressions of support that might help.

Please comment below or email us at: info@animateprojects.org

Notes:

We set up Animate Projects in 2007 following the sudden death of Dick Arnall, on the understanding that the Arts Council intended to make us a ‘regularly funded organisation’, however they have only ever given us ‘project’ support.

Arts Council England told us that an application to Grants for the arts for our 2011 - 2012 programme was our only option for support. We have had positive discussions with Channel 4 and were hopeful that the AnimateTV scheme would run again.

The Arts Council assessment of the application stated that, although Animate Projects has a strong artistic record and is seen as a strategically important organisation, ‘it would not be fair or consistent to fund activity of this nature through Grants for the arts.’ This is despite our having been funded through Grants for the arts since 2007.

We have applied for ACE Portfolio funding, but that would commence in April 2012, and without GftA support we cannot sustain the organisation over the 12 months until then.

Animate Projects is the only UK organisation with a particular focus on the production and exhibition of experimental animation, and is at the forefront in the commission of artists’ moving image for exhibition online and digital platforms.

Download the press release here.