Aardman Equality, Diversity & Inclusion update, August 2025

Aardman is committed to being open and transparent about the work we are doing to improve representation throughout our workforce and to increase the level of on-screen diversity in our productions. This is the tenth in a series of regular updates documenting our progress.

Progress made in the previous six months (March – August 2025):

The below correlates to the priorities we set ourselves in our previous Equality, Diversity & Inclusion update in February 2025:

• Continue working on neurodiversity awareness in and around the office: In March, we rolled out our Neurodiversity Toolkit to all employees. In April, we ran an ‘Introduction to Neurodiversity’ session via Inclusive Employers, of which we are a member. We have also reignited our partnership with Flycheese, a studio that specialises in providing opportunities in the industry for people who need support to live their lives, and are together planning an event for the second half of this year. We are preparing an internal survey to measure the impact of our work on neurodiversity awareness and understanding over the past 1.5 years.
  
  
• Develop a week-long residential stop motion animation camp and development programme for students from diverse backgrounds: We are submitting a funding proposal to the BFI in partnership with Calling the Shots in the hope of delivering this camp in summer 2026 or 2027.
  
  
• Explore how we can support St Paul’s Carnival, recognising the importance of Bristol’s African Caribbean communities: This is on pause for now. We are able to offer in-kind support via animation workshops. St Paul’s Carnival is currently focused on seeking financial partnerships.
  
  
• Continue our relationship and support of Bristol Pride: This year, Lucy Highet from our art department ran a workshop with Off The Record which provides a safe, joyful and supportive space for young people aged 11-25 who are LGBTQIA+ or are exploring their gender and sexuality. Inspired by the participants’ creations, Lucy then designed a t-shirt which we sold to raise funds for Bristol Pride. Over 115 t-shirts were sold. The design has also been turned into a mural called ‘AardPride: Love in Full Colour’ at Aardman’s Gas Ferry Road site. A team from Aardman attended Bristol Pride and we held a screening of LGBTQ+ stories to mark the celebration.
  
  
• Support Ukrainian animation studio Animagrad by offering 10 places on our Aardman Academy online storyboarding programme plus mentorship: This opportunity is available when the team at Animagrad are in a position to take it up.
  
  
• Relaunch Aardman’s mentorship scheme this March: The relaunch was a success, with 16 sets of mentors and mentees paired up across the business.
  
  
• Work with Into Film, hosting a workshop and talk as part of National Careers Week at Yeovil College: This took place in March with 300 students and marked a successful expansion of our outreach programme beyond the Bristol and West of England area. We also participated in BAFTA x Into Film’s Careers Insights for Careers Week, the V&A Schools and Colleges Programme, and Guru Live for BAFTA Cymru. Each of these initiatives is aimed at engaging different audiences and making careers in the screen industries more accessible.

In addition to the above targets identified for the last six-month period, we also:

• Continued our outreach programme: We conducted five school visits over the summer, including one SEN school, for whom we provided work experience for pupils unable to do placements outside of the school setting.
  
• Supported looked after children in our local area: Together with Bristol Council, we ran a model-making workshop at Bristol Beacon for children in care.
  
  
• Supported Bristol Refugee Rights: Together with our co-founder David Sproxton, we ran a workshop for staff who support asylum seekers and new refugees in the Bristol area.
  
  
• Continued our age inclusion work: We marked Age Without Limits Day in June by sharing resources on our staff intranet. These included an age inclusion talk from Inclusive Employers covering topics such as tackling unconscious bias, generational stereotypes and the value of a multigenerational workplace.
  
  
• Launched a new Stop Motion Filmmaking Bursary: We are fully funding a place on our 26-week flagship In-Studio Stop Motion course for an aspiring animator who is from a background underrepresented in the animation industry, or who faces barriers in accessing creative opportunities. Please see this page for details of how to apply.

Priorities for the coming six months (September 2025 - February 2026):

As we approach our 50^th anniversary year in 2026, we are actively planning how to embed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion across our celebrations and initiatives - using Aardman’s influence to inspire meaningful change within the screen industries and champion greater accessibility and representation. Our key areas of focus for the next six months are:

1. Writing a new three-year Equality, Diversity & Inclusion strategy for 2026-2029: Building on the success of our 2022-2025 strategy.
   
   
2. Extending our work to become more outward facing: To date, most of our initiatives have focused on what we can do to make improvements here at Aardman, but we hope to make an impact and inspire action across the wider animation and creative industries. Whilst we know we still have much work to do, and that this is an ongoing process, this is our 10th update in this series marking five years of concerted efforts to increase diversity and inclusion at Aardman. At this point, we believe we have gathered insights and learnings that could be of use to others within our industries and have set ourselves the goal of doing more outward facing EDI work.
   
   
3. Continuing to ensure diversity and inclusion are a part of everyday life at Aardman: Through initiatives such as National Inclusion Week in September, during which we will pick a different theme each day and share a reminder of our initiatives, resources and something interactive to all employees.
   
   
4. Seizing the opportunity of a new production beginning in the autumn: We scale up our workforce depending on the type and volume of projects in production, so a new feature film means a new intake of people. We will seize this opportunity to reach and engage new team members with our initiatives.

If you would like to know more about the above, or are a partner who would like to support one of our initiatives, please contact Pauline Mallam, our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Manager, at Pauline.Mallam@aardman.com.