Europe is full of animation talent, excellent studios and creative producers. It is home to major international film festivals, and devoted audiences. The creation of the ALICE project is based on the evidence that there is a strategic need for integrated optimization of all these resources to build a powerful European industry that will create jobs and make a place for itself among the industry giants in the US and in Asia. This will require close cooperation between countries and the setup of a co-production friendly ecosystem — circumstances that ALICE proposes to create across its six territories by recommending policies that will facilitate them.
Defining the right policies starts with having an in-depth understanding of the existing ecosystem. Therefore, since the beginning of the project, ALICE’s Catalan partner PROA has been leading the work of mapping out the animation value chain, from the creative idea to the preservation of a production. The work aims at establishing a methodology that will allow ALICE’s partners to identify the many different players involved in the life of a production (including audiences), define their actions at every step of the process, comprehend how they influence each other, and measure their added value using quantitative and qualitative indicators.
JOSEP. Co produced by LES FILMS D’ICI MÉDITERRANÉE (FR) and IMAGIC TV (ES, ProAnimats)
In so doing, ALICE will provide a detailed look into the animation production chain, the distribution chain, and the different supporting systems including education and training, regulation, financing and the preservation of animated works. It will provide a number of the potential outputs of using this methodology, which include the creation or development of databases, the publication of industry reports or the formulation of policy recommendations. In a second phase, it could be tested in ALICE’s six territories, including Wallonia (Belgium), the Hauts-de-France region, Catalonia (Spain), the Puglia region (Italy), Slovakia and the Rzeszow region (Poland). The new methodology will help the project partners to perform a sectoral benchmark, draw comparisons and identify relevant opportunities for improvement in order to define coherent policy recommendations about the needs of the pan-European animation market.
ROYALS NEXT DOOR. Co produced by Pikkukala Oy (FI), Pikkukala BCN (ES), Ink&Light (IE), Lunanime (BE)
PROA, in collaboration with ALICE partner from Slovakia, has already put together a first draft proposal which will be presented to all the partners over the course of September. The document will serve as a basis for further discussions involving all partners, in particular for transversal discussions on the selection and use of the variables for analysis and appropriate indicators within ALICE’s working groups. Continued dialogue with the working groups will also help develop and refine a methodology adapted to the specific features of the animation sector.
