An exciting season celebrating animation will begin next month co-ordinated by Creative Industries Trafford in partnership with Waterside, Sale. This will include a conference, a new Postman Pat exhibition and outreach work.
Waterside is home to the internationally-acclaimed animation collection from Cosgrove Hall Films, which includes some of the best-loved children’s characters such as Danger Mouse, Count Duckula, Chorlton & the Wheelies and many more.
The season will start with the Puppet Masters Animation Conference on Sat 06 November. Returning for its sixth time, the conference hosted by Ric Michael, will be a day featuring discussions and masterclass talks from animation industry experts who are responsible for some of the most celebrated animation characters in popular culture.
The conference will welcome Annika Bluhm, Creative Executive at Dreamworks Animation where she has developed and produced much loved television shows such as Noddy. She was also the series producer and head writer on six series of Postman Pat.
Also, the day will feature multi-award winning animation director Niki Lindroth von Bahr (via live video link from Stockholm) and an in-person discussion with model maker and director Astrid Goldsmith. Full biographies in Notes.
As part of the season of animation, Creative Industries Trafford has commissioned two original animated short films and the commissioned artists will be joining us to speak about their individual processes with a special screening of their work in development.
There will also be a chance to see close up some of the original sets and props from Postman Pat ahead of the brand new exhibition opening later in November – Postman Pat: Welcome to Greendale and maybe a chance to meet one or two of the celebrity puppets!
Thanks to funding from Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Cosgrove Hall Films Archive in partnership with Creative Industries Trafford, will be working with community groups ARC in Stockport and Trafford Medical Education Service. The groups will use the archive as inspiration for story-telling and developing new skills – from script-writing, storyboarding, and character design, to model-making, set building or animating.
Richard Evans, Creative Industries Trafford Co-ordinator, says “We are delighted to bring together another edition of Puppet Masters for animators, animation students and fans of the genre, thanks to support from Arts Council England. This year, we’re honoured to be able to follow Puppet Masters with the Postman Pat exhibition at Waterside, delivered by the Cosgrove Hall Films Archive, to showcase the craft behind this much-loved TV show, with kind support from Mackinnon & Saunders, Dreamworks and NBC Universal. Being able to use animation as a platform for public engagement with our partners ARC and Trafford MES shows the unique role that art and creativity play in wellbeing to build skills and bring people together.”
