One day early in 1977, I found out that some of my mates from the socialist women’s action group were involved in making a cartoon film. It was about nursery education - that being something that was difficult to get hold of in those days - there wasn’t any. It was one of the demands of the women’s liberation movement at that time: Free childcare on demand. 

As soon as I found out about this film, I thought it sounded great, and they said why don’t you come and join in. We were a group of 4 to 6 women, there was a bit of coming and going. We were paid on a casual basis, £1 an hour, which was good money in those days. Most of us had never done anything like this kind of work before. I mean most of us could draw and paint, but even those of us who had done animation before hadn’t got much experience of filmmaking as a whole. 

Basically, doing traditional animation involved drawing and painting all day. We did this in New York Street, in an office on the 4th or 5th floor. In the summer it was really hot and in the winter it was cold. But it was nice being just next to the market, and round the corner from Beano’s wholefood shop on Kirkgate, and the Wharf Street Café. Suma was based in Wharf Street too at the time – the area was a little nestbed of young workers’ co-operatives.

It took us a couple of years to finish the nursery film, and during that time we were called the Nursery Film Group. But when we finished it, there were four of us left – we were so pleased that we’d managed to achieve what we’d set out to do - and we said, oh, we’ve made a film - let’s do another one! That’s when we started calling ourselves Leeds Animation Workshop.

I had been a shop steward in some of my previous jobs, and because I’d also done teacher training, I was offered a part-time job teaching trade union studies. At first I said no no I can’t do that, but I was persuaded, and started teaching shop stewards one day a week, and then went on to teach workplace health and safety to trade union representatives.

Around the time we finished the nursery film, in 1978, I found out that the Health and Safety at Work Act was just about to come into force, which meant that every workplace would have to appoint a health and safety representative, usually from the trade union – and so far there were hardly any resources to train them with.

So we got the idea to make a film about health and safety at work, that would be useful to the trade unions. That ended up being “Risky Business,” which took us another couple of years to make – and was the first film that we made as Leeds Animation Workshop.

The Workshop has gone on to make many more films – 50 or so by now. Some have been translated into different languages and have been shown around the world. But since 1981 they have all been made at our base, which is a back-to-back house in Harehills. We have also done quite a bit of teaching, of basic animation skills, especially here in this neighbourhood: and we put on screenings of films by other people too.

For a few months in the early 80s we employed two or three blokes, but otherwise we’ve always been a women’s collective. Not all our films are about women’s issues, but they are all made with a feminist viewpoint in mind, and generally try to encourage fairness and equality.  When possible we like to make people laugh at the same time.

  During the 1980s, small film workshops like ours could get grants that gave you considerable freedom to do whatever work you wanted to produce. During that time we were able to make probably some of our most radical films. That changed under the Thatcher government – all you could do then was raise funds for one film at a time, then hurry on to the next one. But European funding helped us a lot, and for several years we were working with groups who distributed our films in France, Greece, Ireland, Austria and other countries – some have gone further afield to places like India too. 

The last ten years have been quite tough for us though – it’s been harder to get funding, and we don’t always have enough to pay ourselves. But what’s been great is having more young women animators join us, bringing fresh enthusiasm and new ideas.  

Leeds Animation Workshop is now 45 years old. 

Leeds 2023 City of Culture has commissioned us to produce work in Harehills, and we’ve enjoyed concentrating on our own neighbourhood – while at the same time we’ve been really pleased to find there is still interest from abroad in our films: they’ve recently won awards in a dozen or so countries, and will feature later this year in exhibitions for several months, in both Barcelona and Madrid. Quite surprising really, coming from a little back-to-back in Harehills!