Ashley Dean

This talk presents a very recent collaboration between academics in film animation and creative technologies with the educational wing of Leeds International Piano Competition. The creation of a music performance-based animation designed for young children internationally and the musical synchronicities involved in its production are reflected on here.

St Paul’s Animation Club was a ten week after-school club which took place at St Paul’s CofE school in York in the summer term of 2023. These sessions were mixed ages and encouraged playful, experimental approaches where the children could adopt and develop their own individual ideas and methods around animation. The Animated Tea Towel was the filmic result, a nod to the practice of the inclusive and representational fundraising artefact favoured by primary schools worldwide: the class tea towel. The film was curated from a wealth of static and animated material created in the workshops where children explored boiling line, loops & cycles, keyframes & inbetweening, lip-syncing, rotoscoping and more. As an activity that took place out of school hours, the sessions adopted a democratic learning environment, where the facilitators (both animators and parents themselves) asked the question: what do you really want to do? Each week was responsive to the needs and wishes of the group in order to establish a consensual trajectory for learning. In keeping with this education philosophy, we were keen that any outcome from St Paul’s Animation Club was directed by the children themselves and not imposed by adults as is so often the case in young people’s lived experience. This agency was achieved directly through articulation and expression, and also indirectly through the material that was created in the sessions. This method allowed for all the children to have a say whether they were confident enough to speak up - or not - including those voices that might ordinarily be overlooked. This presentation looks at how animation can be an important tool for representation, expression and the authentic voice of children.