Jumping Joan by Petra Freeman, Animate!, 8 mins., 1994.

Animate!
The various schemes which have been successfully launched by Rodney Wilson and Dave Curtis are all linked in some way to television, often with a particular television company as co-investor, as well as broadcaster. In the case of animated film the relevant scheme is called Animate! which is now in its seventh year and has financed a total of 25 new works since its inception, many of which have won major international awards. This year the Arts Council's contribution to the production of animation was honored by the Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films which presented one of its most prestigious awards to Dave Curtis and the Animate! production adviser Dick Arnall. Animate! is a partnership between the Arts Council and Channel 4 (annual funding currently stands at £69,000 [$109, 365] from Channel 4 and £27,000 [$42,795] from the Arts Council) and is committed to supporting new talent and providing an opportunity for filmmakers to experiment in both form and content.

Animate! will follow Rodney Wilson out of the Arts Council into the newly-created quasi-private sector. This movement from public to private is part of a wider trend towards privitization of public services that the Tory administration has pursued relentlessly since 1979. Banner headlines greet each sale of the major utilities--water, railways, telecommunications, etc.--but less publicity attends the extensive privatization of public services previously offered through local authorities, for instance, street cleaning, building and road maintenance, healthcare, education, etc. This privatization process, known as compulsory competitive tendering, has been widely promoted by the Tories as a "value for money" policy, which ultimately relieves the public of burdensome taxes and other levies.

But beneath this acceptable face of capitalism lies a single-minded political ambition to smash the post-war settlement and replace its broad-based nurturing ideology with something more akin to a Hobbesian state of nature, a free-for-all in which everyone competes in an open market. As a result, the UK is undergoing a period of massive social change the outcome of which is only now beginning to be predictable.

How does Animate! fit into the wider picture? Animate! is a fragile scheme, nutured within the Arts Council by Dave Curtis and within Channel 4 by Clare Kitson, Commissioning Editor for Animation--two individuals whose passion and commitment to animation have set the rigorous selection standards for the scheme which has resulted in the production of award-winning work. Animate! will pass from this warm environment into an unfriendly marketplace, where it must jostle for funding with more glamorous, high profile, commercial projects.

Tim Webb graduated from the West Surrey College of Art and Design and now teaches in the Royal College of Art Animation Department. 15th February mixes live action and animation to describe a symbolic rejection and its sadistic outcome as related in the poem by Peter Reading.