Cardiff Animation Festival: Reducing the carbon impact of animation

About Cardiff Animation Festival 

Cardiff Animation Festival is a biennial celebration of all things animation, held in Wales’ capital city. The first festival ran in 2018 and the second in 2020, was conducted online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, the festival returned as a hybrid of in-person and online events. Despite some challenging times, the festival is growing and thriving. 

We did a seed-funded Clwstwr project back in 2020 

The project looked at greening the animation industry, however because we received the funding when the pandemic hit, we had to change our original idea.  We looked at lessons the animation industry could learn from during lockdown and the ways the industry managed to survive. 

The industry was able to be quite resilient and pivot to remote working. It was a moment of real change that we dug into to find observations. For example, not only was the uptake of remote working positively received, but it also had a positive impact on carbon footprints. At the end of the project, we produced a report and learnings, but we wanted to go further. That’s where this Green Cymru project came in. 

We’d identified the main areas of carbon impact for people working in animation 

As we’d discussed pipelines and carbon emissions with industry members (everyone from freelancers to large companies), we had a good grasp of the current situation in terms of carbon-emitting problem areas. Many companies felt they didn’t have the time or the knowledge to make changes themselves. Also, many people felt like they didn't have control over the buildings where they were working. 

Our Green Cymru Challenge Fund project focused on finding solutions to such issues 

We started with desk-based research to look deeper into what already existed. From conversations with people working in games and VFX, we found that these industries work similarly to animation, so the solutions that work for one might suit the other. We unearthed the processes, pinch points, and eagerness to change in all three industries. 

With specialists, we built our knowledge of areas where potential solutions might be 

We’d identified that having a space specifically set up for animation might be a good solution. Off this, we spoke to people who ran co-working spaces to see how green they were, if they were aiming for net zero, what solutions they had considered or not considered and why – and more questions along those lines. 

We also conducted a survey to gather data on how much information companies and freelancers had about their own carbon footprint, and how easy it would be for them to calculate it. 

Throughout the project, we worked with researcher Jonny Campbell 

Jonny carried out lots of interviews and research, using a holistic approach to discover what the ideal workspace for an animation company might be, in terms of carbon footprint. He divided this vision into four areas of deeper research: buildings and spaces; the facilities that a company offers to staff on-site and in the cloud, and the impact they have; the culture and community of an organisation, and its impact; a company’s creative output, and the power of the things it makes. This gave us an understanding of what companies might want to provide to get closer to net zero. 

Once we’d identified solutions for each area, we designed a workshop with PDR 

Using our findings, PDR ran a co-creation workshop at the 2022 Cardiff Animation Festival. Attendees from animation companies, freelancers and academics worked together to design their perfect net zero space, using questions and prompts designed by us and PDR. 

They explored things like whether certain practices were already in place within their company’s workflow, whether they'd consider alternatives, what they thought about certain options and so on. We covered everything from simple to complicated options – for example LED lighting, bike storage schemes, child care provision in studios, heat recovery from data storage, all sorts. 

We found many things people can do in existing spaces to lower their carbon footprint 

However, there are all sorts of blocks in the way of progress. For example, a lot of the companies within Wales are either renting their spaces on a fairly short lease, or they have a relationship with the landlord where they’re only allowed to do certain things, or they're in a co-working space where they have possibly even less control. These constraints make it harder for companies to address their carbon footprint. 

We know that the biggest areas of carbon impact in a typical animation company are its physical space, its pipelines and travel, but there’s no one-size-fits-all solution because there are so many different ways in which we can work. Of the potential changes that could be made, we believe they’d be better known about and more frequently established if people shared solutions with each other and questioned what’s possible. 

This R&D has given us a solid foundation to offer support to companies 

It has everything from the quick wins to the long-term goals that we have identified, broken down into areas of potential impact. There’s also a suite of resources on our website for the industry to use for free. 

We've also set up a planet-positive animation network, which is a space where companies can come together to share things they’ve learned, access our resources, ask questions and support each other. That space is currently on Discord, but we’re hoping to bring it into the physical world too for those who’d rather chat in person. 

For companies that want a bit more support along their journey to net zero, we’ve set up a consultancy service. Our projects showed us that some companies don’t have the time or resources to implement changes that will reduce their carbon footprint, so we’re offering them our consultancy service to help them out. 

The information we’ve collated will always be open access, so those that have the time and inclination to make changes themselves can get the resources for free. We’re just trying to have as much impact as we can through a range of different solutions for different types of people and companies. 

The structures of power over spaces are a real challenge 

That's something we'd like to address in a future project. Could we create this ideal space, or could we work together with an existing space, to make it possible for net zero to happen? It’d be interesting to explore, given what we now know about minimising climate impact within the animation industry.