Inside Animation Dingle: Storytelling, the Original IP Crisis, and Student Animation from the Festival Floor
Kids Media Club PodcastShow Notes
This bonus episode takes a different format, with Emily reporting live from the Animation Dingle Festival in County Kerry, Ireland. Rather than a single guest, the episode brings together three separate conversations captured across the festival weekend: an interview with co-founder and festival director Maurice Galway, a chat with veteran screenwriter and director Karey Kirkpatrick, and a conversation with Ailbhe Fearon and Muireann Mulvihill, the two recent graduates who swept the festival's Animation Awards with their short film Anam. Maurice sets the scene by explaining what makes Animation Dingle distinct from the industry's typical market-driven events. Now approaching its 15th year, the festival deliberately caps attendance at 750 and keeps its split exactly 50/50 between students and professionals — a structural choice that keeps the focus squarely on education and mentorship rather than deal-making. Maurice talks through several initiatives designed to lower the intimidation barrier for students, including the "Pitch and a Pint" session where students pitch directly to executives from broadcasters and streamers, a new confessional-style format for sharing ideas too wild or half-formed for a public pitch, and a "Tell Your Untold Story" stage coaching session. A theme Maurice returns to is the two-way nature of the inspiration: professionals arrive to give, and consistently leave having received something themselves from the energy and enthusiasm in the room. Karey Kirkpatrick brings a sharp perspective on the state of the industry, drawing on a long career that includes work with Aardman and multiple original features. The central argument she makes is that the entertainment industry has become so risk-averse — particularly as studios answer to shareholders rather than creative leads — that the idea of a "sure thing" has taken over, even though it doesn't really exist. She uses K Pop Demon Hunters as a case study in how a genuinely original, unconventional idea can catch fire when it's given the right platform and timing, but notes that the same idea would likely have been passed over repeatedly in a pitch room. The conversation turns to what this means for emerging creators, and Karey's advice is clear and practical: don't wait to be discovered through a pitch, make things. Streamers in particular, she argues, are increasingly behaving like distribution platforms rather than development partners — meaning the work needs to demonstrate proof of concept before it reaches them, not after. Her summary advice to students is to build the craft fundamentals so that when a door opens, they can handle the pressure that comes with it. The episode closes with Ailbhe Fearon and Muireann Mulvihill, whose Irish-language short Anam — meaning "soul" — won seven awards at the festival, including the overall Student Animation Award. The film, about an old man and a young boy on the Aran Island of Inis Oírr, grew out of a two-week research residency on the island and draws on the philosophy of John O'Donohue and the concept of the inner child. Their commitment to making the film in Irish — not translating an English script but constructing it in the language from the ground up, down to getting the specific Inis Oírr dialect right — gives the conversation a quietly profound dimension. They also share the story of reaching out to musician Brian McGlynn (of New Vagabond) after listening to his album on repeat throughout their residency, and his score going on to win its own award at the festival. Both are newly graduated and keen to stay in the Irish animation space. Key Takeaways: Animation Dingle is deliberately not a market — the 50/50 student-to-professional split and the cap of 750 attendees are design choices that protect the festival's educational culture and make it distinct from every other industry gathering. Lowering the stakes unlocks participation — the confessional-style pitch format and the "Tell Your Untold Story" session a
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A live recording from MIP Junior in Cannes, with Andy, Emily and Jo grabbing Jon Mason, founder of Jollywise and creator of Stan and Gran, for a conversation that cuts against the grain of most MIP conversations. Instead of talking about how to get a show made, Jon is asking whether the show is the right format at all — and whether the industry is measuring the wrong things entirely. The provocation at the heart of the discussion is a LinkedIn article Jon wrote questioning whether dwell time and views are sufficient metrics for kids content, at a moment when a World Economic Forum white paper on AI and children is asking the same question from a policy direction. Jon’s argument is that the industry has allowed data that is easy to collect — clicks, completion rates, engagement — to become the only data that matters, when what actually counts is what a child does after the content ends. Whether they go outside, ask a question, make something, explore. That’s much harder to measure, but arguably much more important. Bluey, he notes, are starting to think about exactly this. The conversation ranges across screen-free AI products (Mallow, Freckle, Yoto), the gap between the ed-tech world and the kids IP world that MIP could usefully bridge, the risk of AI companions that are permanently available and relentlessly sycophantic, and Jon’s core creative mission with Stan and Gran: getting kids outside. His closing challenge to the room is a good one — does your IP have to be a TV show? And if the answer is yes, are you absolutely sure?
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Jo is absent again, so Andy and Emily have a two-topic episode: first, the announcement of the Business of Children's Media Summit, taking place November 12th in Dublin; then a deep dive into Jeffrey Katzenberg's viral essay on AI and the future of animation. Dennis Crushall from Precisify joins briefly to help launch the summit, which Emily has been quietly building for months in partnership with Cultural and Creative Industries Skillnet. Taking place at the Alex Hotel in Dublin, the day-long event is focused on going direct to audience — YouTube, gaming, consumer products, and franchise strategy — and features keynote speaker Erica Quinn, Director of Kids and Family Consumer Insights at Disney, alongside BBC Children's and Education's Anna Taganov. Tickets are €75 via Eventbrite, and there will be a live podcast recording on the day. Emily has also promised a pint of Guinness to every international attendee, a commitment Andy intends to make very expensive. The second half is a sharp dissection of Katzenberg's 2,000-word Twitter essay positioning AI as the next Toy Story moment for Hollywood — expansive rather than destructive, with tech providing the tools and Hollywood providing the soul. Andy's most interesting observation is around the John Philip Sousa parallel Katzenberg draws: the real fight may not be about the technology at all, but about copyright compensation — and studios sitting on vast IP libraries, including the newly merged Paramount-Warner entity, could stand to benefit significantly if the law catches up. The episode closes on a fittingly ironic note: someone ran the essay through an AI checker and it came back 60% AI-generated. 🎟️ Get your tickets for the Business of Children's Media Summit: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/the-business-of-childrens-media-summit-tickets-1998215489319 📊 Explore Precisify's research and reports: https://www.precisify.com/reports-and-playbooks