Episode 169 - Leeds Animation Workshop (with Terry Wragg)
Space Ghost Coast to Coast (Mike Lazzo, 1994-2008)
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
Episode 169 marks the Fantasy/Animation podcast’s first engagement with the work of the Leeds Animation Workshop, a pioneering women’s animation collective formally established in 1978 to produce and distribute animated films on a variety of social, cultural, and educational issues. A not-for-profit, grassroots cooperative, the Workshop has been at the forefront in developing animation’s role as a tool for activism and action, not just organising screenings and providing workshops for adults and young people, but working “in consultation with organisations and individuals” to specialise “in making complex or sensitive issues more accessible to audiences, and at times offering an alternative point of view.” Chris and Alex are delighted to be joined in this episode by one of the Leeds Animation Workshop’s founding members, Terry Wragg, who recounts the often-tumultuous history of the Workshop and its desire to provoke discussion and debate through the study of three of its key works: Gives Us a Smile (1983), which depicts the daily harassment of women and includes quotes taken from real police cases and interviews; Bridging the Gap (2001), an examination of tensions between parents and their teenage children narrated by Michael Rosen; and They Call Us Maids (2015), a collaboration with Justice 4 Domestic Workers based on the real life stories of thousands of migrant women.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
**As featured on MillionPodcast’s Best 10 UK Animation Podcasts and Best 60 Movie Podcasts in the UK**
Suggested Readings
Hamad, Hannah. 2021. “Leeds Animation Workshop’s Give Us A Smile: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy.” Fantasy/Animation (January 29, 2021), available at: https://www.fantasy-animation.org/current-posts/leeds-animation-workshops-give-us-a-smile-a-feminist-revenge-fantasy.
Lant, Antonia. 1993. “Women’s Independent Cinema in Eighties Britain: the Case of Leeds Animation Workshop.” In Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, edited by Lester Friedman, 159-181. London: University College London.
Tasker, Yvonne. 2016. “An Interview with Terry Wragg on the Work of the Leeds Animation Workshop.” Feminist Media Histories 2, no. 2: 122-132.
Thomson, Else. 2020. “Leeds Animation Workshop.” In The International Encylopedia of Gender, Media and Communication, edited by Karen Ross, Ingrid Bachmann, Valentina Cardo, Sujata Moorti and Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, available here.