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Today saw the launch of the IBEC Film & Television production report 2009. I sat on the committee and was representing the animation sector. Below is the text from my summary of the Irish Animation Sector in 2008 and you can download the full report from www.ibec.ie

Chapter One, Animation Production in Ireland

The Irish animation sector is an important contributor to the Creative Economy. The animation sector had a highly productive year in the past year, with much critical and commercial success. One measure of success is audience share, and there is hardly a children’s channel in the world that is not today screening a programme that was produced or co-produced with an Irish studio.

The relative absence of a home market sees the indigenous production sector focus almost entirely on export sales. With the notable exception of the Section 481 tax incentive, only 2% of the available budgets from national broadcasters and funding agencies went towards animation production. The S481 tax incentive remains the key driver for our continued sustainability as an export focused sector.

The sector has matured and recognises that by being a cohesive group we can promote ‘Ireland Inc’ as an international hub for animation excellence. To that end, over the past two years the sector has worked with Enterprise Ireland to establish an Animation CEO forum. One of the achievements of the forum is the creation of www.animationireland.com, a site that promotes all the individual studios and Ireland as a destination for securing international production, co-production and distribution. The combined objective of the sector is to ensure a mixture of international work-for-hire productions alongside creating, producing and exploiting its own IP.

The old Chinese curse ‘may you live in interesting times’ has never been more relevant to our industry than today. The ‘interesting’ economic circumstances we have faced since the last IBEC report have seen everyone relook at their cost base and question many norms of doing business. Another ‘interesting’ challenge is the financing of international productions against the expense of the Euro and reduced licence fees, with a background of audiences expecting free content from the internet and increased piracy.

Despite this, audiences will always have an appetite for, and pay for, good stories with engaging characters regardless of the economic circumstances of the day. By combining talent, creativity and innovation with strong business and production skills as well as an ongoing investment in R&D, the animation sector has many key ingredients to position itself for growth in the years ahead. With just a small bit of domestic broadcast support and extra focus from state agencies, the animation sector in Ireland has the potential to become one of the key drivers of the creative economy in these ‘interesting’ times.