Drawing as collective self-care: Leeds animation workshop’s collaborative practices during the pandemic

Pandemic cinema 2.0: A feminist network of creative solidarity

Since the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 disease a global pandemic on 11 March 2020, the United Kingdom was one of the first countries in Europe to announce a conditional plan for the lifting of social restrictions to contain the spreading of the virus. Following the recrudescence of the pandemic in winter 2021, the government reinstated a series of national, regional or local lockdowns until the end of 2021 (Institute for Government, 2022). On 21 January 2021, Priti Patel, UK Home Secretary of State, made a public statement on the Coronavirus in which she emphasized the importance of the vaccination as a primary and safe means of protection and announced the implementation of a new series of restrictions to social gatherings in public and private contexts (UK GOV, 2021). The announcement marked the Liberal government’s setback on its economy-privileging policy about social restrictions, alerted by the spike of Covid-19-related deaths and hospitalizations. It contrasted with the Liberal Party’s economy-driven previous policies about lockdown measures, which found echo in the fast-recovery plan of the British film industry set to reboot film and TV production after 6 months of lockdown disruption through programmes of record investment that intensified in the last trimester of 2020 (BFI Online, 2021). ⁴

While the implementation of multiple lockdowns hit all sectors of the film industry in the United Kingdom (Wilson, 2023), their impact on film animation were less dramatic, particularly at the onset of the pandemic. As experimental animator and scholar Myria Christophini (2023) argues in a recent article inspired by her own experience working on collaborative animation projects in the United Kingdom during the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, animation, in comparison to other participatory arts and sectors within film industry, ‘stayed largely in production, even if it also had to adjust and slow its turnout pace’. ⁵ This was due to the fact that during the pandemic animators were able to maintain their usual modes of production, working on their computers from home and adding online collaborations (Christophini, 2023). ⁶

Ostensibly, this situation also applies to LAW. When the Covid-19 epidemic broke out, LAW members, as most animators at the time, were mainly working from home. When the lockdown began, LAW, like many other independent film structures and institutions, moved all its production and outreach activities online. These included the production of two new short films developed or completed during participatory workshops offered to vulnerable communities in collaboration with dedicated centres or institutions and the promotion of special or curated screenings of films from the collective’s catalogue on topics widely discussed during the lockdown, such as migrant workers’ precarious conditions and domestic violence.

To be sure, LAW’s intensification of online initiatives during the pandemic reflects a generalized phenomenon across a wide spectrum of media and culture industries (Hediger et al., 2020; Nau et al., 2023). Yet the collective’s use of online technology in lockdown conditions was not aligned with the British film industry’s strategies of economic recovery and also eschewed the type of personal branding associated with the digital-savvy, techno-geek gendered activism of Fourth-Wave feminism. The growing role of social media in shaping feminist grassroots activism has been the subject of vast scrutiny, also from intersectional and decolonizing frameworks of analysis (Everett 2004; Gajjala, 2012; Jin, 2015; Megarry, 2020; Sandoval, 2000) and in relation to gendered solidarity in periods of crisis and emergency (Fotopoulou, 2017; Fu and Zhang, 2019; Rentschler and Thrift, 2015). While the centrality of digital technologies and social media for the rearticulation of grassroots, transnational and intersectional forms of feminist activism is indisputable, the varying degrees of political engagement of these situated media practices and their difficult position within the increasingly neoliberal context of digital media has raised questions (Baer, 2016) and critiques (Megarry, 2020). Organizations like LAW, which found inspiration in the collaborative and anti-discriminatory methods and infrastructures of the Women’s Liberations Movement and of the radical Left, the blueprint for connected forms of embodied activism is the grassroots networks constituted during the 1970s by consciousness-raising groups, women’s centres and libraries, and independent printed media (Maule, 2023: 196–197). The collective, which operates on the principles of equitable labour division and process-making, welcomed the potential of digital technologies to optimize affordable and user-friendly modes of production yet stayed clear from neoliberal logics associated with digital culture (Maule, 2023: 199–200). Yet for LAW, as for other women’s film and video organizations emerged in North America and Western Europe since the 1970s, the transition to an all-online environment during the pandemic signalled less an adaptation to an emergency-accelerated media trend than a repurposing of their mandate on available media. ⁷ For LAW, this mandate was to produce and disseminate accessible films about complex and sensitive issues regarding gender and sexuality, migrant exploitation, racism and classism, global environmental crises and different abilities (LAW). ⁸

Referred to activist groupings and movements, the concept of repurposing describes the reorientation of media for the development of social consciousness and action (Anderson, 2015; Renzi, 2020). According to Benjamin Anderson, repurposing in present-day culture industry should aim to raise consciousness and ‘be grounded in praxis and not simply in ideology’, in the sense of having a direct affiliation with a movement or a cause (Anderson, 2015: 23). Alessandra Renzi (2020: 38), who situates repurposing within the context of Italy’s connective activism, describes it as the hacking of media, sociality and knowledge production. Within the context of women’s film and video organizations like LAW, established since the 1970s within the framework of the Women’s Liberation Movement and informed by counter- and guerrilla media strategies, repurposing is an act of embodied social intervention (Maule, 2023: 196).

In the next two sections, I will present LAW’s media strategies during the Covid-19 lockdowns as a repurposing of the collective’s feminist and socialist praxis of feminist solidarity on digital platforms and social media. In presenting these strategies, I will situate them within gender-informed theories about digital culture and underscore their activist purpose.

Pandemic blogging as gendered connective action

In this section of the article, I will examine the ways in which LAW used their social media (i.e. Facebook and what was formerly known as Twitter, renamed X in 2023) ⁹ to announce and organize online media events during the pandemic lockdowns. LAW’s online performativity might appear modest, if compared to that of major digital platforms or larger organizations’ social media accounts through standard criteria of analytic scrutiny. The number of followers (682) on LAW’s Facebook website is relatively contained, even compared to other women’s film and video organizations and the posts on this platform receive an average of likes in the single digits, rarely going above that (LAW, https://www.facebook.com/people/Leeds-Animation-Workshop/100063594607538/). The collective is more visible on its Twitter account, with more than 2000 followers, even though the average of its posts viewed remains low (LAW, https://twitter.com/leedsanimation). During the pandemic LAW, while maintaining a discrete profile, started posting more frequently on these two platforms. In its posts, the collective shared gender-relevant information about upcoming online screenings, webinar symposia or special presentations, workshops and other activities organized by them and other film or cultural organizations and institutions, such as film festivals, universities, archives, museums, libraries and public media broadcasters. LAW’s posts highlighted gender-relevant screening events, campaigns and project on support of vulnerable subjects and communities, most notably migrant domestic workers, women victims of domestic abuse and senior citizens. Besides informing about these initiatives (some of which featured films from their catalogue), LAW organized special screenings of their films relevant to issues of gender violence, isolation, mental health, either from their catalogue or developed with affected communities and in collaboration with social centres and institutes. ¹⁰

The first mention of the pandemic on LAW’s social media was in an announcement of an online screening of Wes Anderson’s film Isles of Dogs (Anderson, 2018), posted on the collective’s Facebook page on 15 March 2020. The post commented on an online screening offered by a cineclub in Genoa, Italy, the first country in Europe to be hit by the virus with a note of solidarity as follows: ‘Even if we are being quarantined – our friends in Italy show how we can still go to the cinema and discuss the film. Solidarity with CinePop Burrida and Viva the Radical Film Network!’. ¹¹ This was the first many informational messages that LAW created or shared during the 2020/2021 pandemic, alternating announcements about alternative media initiatives happening worldwide in lockdown conditions with particular attention to gender-informed cinematic institutions and circuits (e.g. women’s film festivals and research groups, women’s centres, feminist libraries) and more ad hoc invitations to screenings proposed by LAW or other institutions featuring films by LAW.

A recurring typology of posts that LAW circulated on its platforms during the pandemic quarantines were messages about social action, prompting for concrete acts of solidarity to help underrepresented and vulnerable subjects and communities under pandemic restrictions. One of the earliest and most important instances of these posts is the one in support of migrants and migrant domestic workers, first appeared on LAW’s Twitter’s account on 20 March 2020 in the form of an invitation to join a crowdsourcing campaign, retweeted from an activist and initiated by The Voice of Domestic Workers, a non-profit group that aims to provide practical and emotional support to undocumented domestic workers in the United Kingdom. ¹² LAW, which already had a long stand on this issue, followed up on the hardship fundraising campaign in the following months. On 7 September 2020, the collective organized a screening of its award-winning short They Called US Maids: The Domestic Workers’ Story (Leeds Animation Workshop, 2015) followed by discussion with LAW members on its social media on its social platforms. ¹³ The 7-minute film, completed in 2015, was highly relevant to the situation of migrant domestic workers in pandemic conditions. Developed through a crowdfunding campaign through the endorsement of various local entities, it animates the real testimonies of dozens of women migrated from very poor contexts within the Global South to work as caretakers in the United Kingdom (LAW). The screening of this film, as well as the fundraising campaign on behalf of domestic migrant workers inspired further online conversations and collaborations the following year. In Summer 2021, Covid19: Chronicles from the Margins, an international ethnographic project about migrant groups and workers during the pandemic, made They Called US Maids available again on YouTube (2021) during the months of August and September, reaching 213 views. ¹⁴ On 23 August of the same year, the research team shared on its website an interview between Marissa Begonia, founder and director of The Voice of Domestic Workers charity group and Amy Charlesworth, a lecturer in Art History at Open University. ¹⁵ The conversation, which contained several images from They Called US Maids, pointed at the material achievements (‘over £20,000 raised which went straight to individual domestic workers for emergency accommodation and food’) and the importance of to move larger events online ‘to widening audiences and preserving audio-visual assets for future profile raising and sharing of resources for the charity’. ¹⁶

In their recently published analysis of the use of Twitter in five gender-focused, non-profit organizations for the benefit of women and girls during the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, Charlotte Nau, Anabel Quan-Haase and Riley McLaughlin use the theoretical framework of microblogging functions, distinguishing between information, community- and action-oriented tweets, to identify themes and recurring motifs emerged in these organizations’ posts during the pandemic (Nau et al., 2023). If we apply this framework to LAW’s discrete yet continuing interventions on social media during the pandemic restrictions, while the informational purpose is an underlying presence in LAW’s posts, the main focus is on media activities aimed at community development and social action and it builds a narrative of feminist solidarity and care. From this perspective, LAW’s presence on social media champions what this recent study identifies as best practices of microblogging in social media, informed by inclusive and community-oriented criteria (Nau et al., 2023).

Making films with vulnerable communities: LAW’s lockdown workshops

During the pandemic, LAW continued production in collaboration with social groups dedicated to vulnerable communities, completing two short films that exemplify the techniques of participatory and inclusive approach to media recurring in animation as well as in feminist media’s approach to digital technology. Before illustrating these projects, an illustration of the collective’s history and feminist media practices is in order.

LAW’s legal constitution as a collective and self-definition as a locally based workshop goes back to the historical roots of the organization as a feminist grouping, created from the initiative of some activists, only two of whom had previous experience in animation (Lant, 2006). The group established itself as a collective after completing an animation film about child day-care (Maule, 2023: 64–65). ¹⁷ Another context that shaped LAW’s approach to feminist media strategies is that of the public funding system established in the United Kingdom during the 1970s and 1980s and promoting decentralized, grassroots type of collective filmmaking, supported by the British government and through its media institutions (i.e. the British Film Institute and Channel 4). The system was formalized through the Film Workshops Declaration (Hedditch, 2021). A self-governed, small enterprise, LAW makes explicit reference to this origin in its self-denomination as a ‘workshop’, which stresses an anti-hierarchical labour ethos and concept of filmmaking.

With the onset of digital animation, LAW progressively abandoned the mode of production that had characterized the organization during its first two decades of operation, involving collective work conducted at the collective’s historic headquarters and consultative meetings during all phases of production (Wragg, 2020). Unlike other British film collectives conceived through the Film Workshops Declaration, LAW survived the dropping of public funds thanks to its collaboration with social and cultural institutions (Wragg, 2020). Yet, especially since the drastic cuts imposed to the arts by the Conservative Party during the first decade of 2000s, it has been chronically under-staffed. As Terry Wragg (2020), co-founder and continuing member since the establishment of LAW explained to me in an interview made at the beginning of the pandemic, she was still ‘the only person in charge, even though five young new members had joined’. ¹⁸

The first film that LAW completed during the pandemic is Locked Down in West Leeds (2021 https://vimeo.com/527733023), a participatory short developed with a group of eight participants during the first phase of the lockdown within the framework of a project funded by the British Council for the senior population. ¹⁹ The collective offered the workshop to members of the Bramley Elderly in Action (BEA), a non-profit home for the elderly established since 1994. ²⁰ The purpose of the workshop was to help the senior population that used to regularly attend activities and meetings at BEA, now forced into isolation, to address the problems of confinement through animation therapy. The eight participants in the workshop, who met with LAW members online over a period of time, were asked to share testimonies of their lockdown experience by creating home-made animation pieces that were presented and filmed during the session. The result was a 6-minute film, including snippets of the group’s sessions, exchanges among workshop participants and LAW animators, and instances of their contributions, at times tentative, but all revealing their creativity and resourcefulness.

The collage of works and images in the film revolves around themes of isolation with creativity and humour. They include, among others, self-portrait snapshots taken during home confinement; drawings expressing personal feelings about the lockdown and stop-motion animations chronicling the new experience of using masks when going shopping or self-distancing while visiting relatives. Other examples of DIY animation in the film are home-made artworks demonizing the pandemic isolation either by anthropomorphising house objects, like a paper plate and a pitcher that become smiling faces or a lamp propped as a cage. The film edits this heterogeneous material over a joyful music soundtrack.

Christophini (2023), who participated in the project as an animator, assesses its outcomes in her abovementioned article by putting forward the distinctive preconditions and dynamics of the workshop, which involved the exchange between experts and participants as a form of recreational bonding. Gauging achievements and challenges encountered during the workshop, she stresses its importance for creating collectively imagined social settings and for helping overcome social isolation (Christophini, 2023). In incorporating the learning process and the socializing dimension of the online setting into the film, she claims that the film shows ‘those taking part enjoying themselves while learning and socializing’ (Christophini, 2023). Overall, the result is an endearing, charming tribute to the resilience of this community and the ability of LAW to create social action through animation.

In Spring 2021, LAW launched on its platforms another participatory film, titled Where She Was to Where She is Now: Celebrating the Women and Girls Initiative, completed during the pandemic. The film had been commissioned in 2016 by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, based in London, within the framework of the 5-year project Women and Girls Initiative and funded by the National Lottery. The omnibus short animation film, started years before, took momentum during the lockdown period. The film was made in partnership with 17 women’s centres from all over England specialized in the protection and assistance of women from underrepresented groups, women discriminated, young and under-aged mothers, assaulted and abused women, sex workers, women using substances or with mental health issues. LAW gave participants – who also included staff members from the centres – the opportunity to provide testimonies about their experiences through animated drawings and writings.

The film begins with an animated map of centres participating in the project, ²¹ and is structured into sections that provide examples from each centre, each section introduced by an intertitle. The diversity of animation styles and techniques in the film reflects the diversity of the women participating, coming from migrant and underrepresented groups, survivors of rape and other trauma, and victims of abuse as sex workers or wives. Through the stewardship of LAW, dozens of women across England, supported by specialists and activists from the women’s centres, expressed their feelings, fears and reactions. In the film, LAW also chronicles group strategies, community efforts and individual paths of a vulnerable towards overcoming domestic violence challenges during the pandemic. The drawings, which visualize personal trajectories, difficult situations, traumas, testimonies by caretakers, are accompanied by the participants’ voices overs or else by drawings of the participants’ keywords, shared to express their trajectories and their feelings. Some of these words are togetherness, collaboration, beauty and freedom.

LAW launched the film on their social media and on YouTube in April 2021 and on 8 June 2022 announced on Twitter that Tavistock was making the film accessible live on its website. ²² The film helped many participants to cope with the challenges of the pandemic. As the Tavistock Institute comments on the page dedicated to the project, it ‘offers flexible, holistic support and illustrates the difference that specialist services for women and girls can make’. ²³ Elaborating on how LAW’s workshop complied with the flexible, holistic approach of the Women and Girls project, the institute emphasizes the ‘difference that specialist services for women and girls can make.’ ²⁴ To this, I would add that besides respecting the project’s format, LAW brought the participants’ experiences together through feminist and intersectional strategies of solidarity and self-care (Oksala, 2016).

Conclusion

As for many other feminist film and video organizations established since the 1970s within the framework of the Women’s Liberation Movement, LAW’s transition to online media activities points at the possibility of reconciling collective action and collective identity as participatory and anti-discriminatory forms of digital embodiment. The activities that the collective produced on its social media or through participatory animation projects trace a narrative of solidarity and self-care for and among women and gendered subjects (Eckert and Steiner, 2016). This narrative is in continuity with LAW’s ideas about the participatory and social function of film and video that have distinguished this West Yorkshire-based collective since its foundation.