Aardman Equality, Diversity & Inclusion update, February 2026

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 eleventh in a series of regular updates documenting our progress.

Progress made in the previous six months (September 2025 – February 2026):

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

• Writing a new three-year Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Strategy for 2026-2028, building on the success of our 2022-2025 strategy: We have drafted our new three-year strategy, which is currently going through internal approvals and on track to be published in the first quarter of 2026. In January, we appointed Helen Beard to the role of Chief People Officer at Aardman. Helen will be overseeing implementation of the strategy.
• Extending our work to become more outward facing: Our first action in this area has been to organise a panel at Manchester Animation Festival 2025, together with our partner studio Flycheese, exploring neurodiversity in animation, the creativity neurodiverse colleagues bring to the industry, and the biases and barriers faced by neurodiverse talent.

o   As part of the panel, we shared more about our neurodiversity toolkit available to all our employees, reasonable adjustments we provide, accommodations made during the recruitment process, and tips on how to build a more inclusive studio environment.

o   There was a full house for the event, with attendees from all across the animation industry.

o   We aspire to build on this with future panels at industry events on topics such as gender equality and anti-racism.

·         Continuing to champion diversity and inclusion as a part of everyday life at Aardman: Throughout National Inclusion Week (15^th – 19^th September), we organised events and initiatives to celebrate diversity at Aardman and to foster more active participation in our EDI work. Each day of the week focused on a different topic, encouraging open and inclusive dialogue:

o Monday: We shared a reminder of the Equality Act 2010, protected characteristics, our employees’ rights at work, and our Age Inclusion talk from Inclusive Employers.

o Tuesday: We organised an AardWomen lunchtime drop-in session at our Aztec West site.

o Wednesday: We held a lunchtime drop-in session at our Gas Ferry Road office, sent out Pride reminders, and ran a model-making workshop with LGBTQ+ young people. We also teamed up with Bristol charity Off The Record and local artist (and former Aardman team member) Lucy Highet to unveil a new Pride mural at our Bristol HQ.

o Thursday: We shared the results of our recent Pulse Survey on neurodiversity (more info on this below) and encouraged partners to consult resources such as our neurodiversity toolkit.

o Friday: We announced our anti-racism training (which took place in November) & re-shared the existing anti-racism page on our intranet.

o   Additionally, to celebrate Black History Month, we shared resources, put up posters throughout both sites and held a screening of the BAFTA winning short film, Two Black Boys in Paradise (2025). The screening was followed by a discussion with the director Baz Sells and producer Ben Jackson.

·         Seizing the opportunity of a new production beginning in the autumn: We have not yet had the opportunity to hold our regular meet-and-greets for newcomers as we are working to such tight production timelines. We are addressing this with two meet-and-greets this quarter, at which we hope to recruit new EDI Champions from across the business.

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

·         Ran an anonymous Pulse Survey in August 2025 about our neurodiversity awareness work, with results shared with the team in September: The survey asked staff whether they identify as neurodiverse, what barriers or challenges those who identify as neurodiverse faced in the workplace, what positive actions has Aardman taken to ensure we met their needs and where Aardman could do better, and what resources they have found most useful for themselves and other people. We are feeding the results back into our planning to further improve the support we provide to neurodiverse colleagues.  

·         Continued our outreach to local schools and young people in our area: We worked with four local schools and held a model making workshop at the Earth Day Heroes Youth Awards, an awards ceremony celebrating young eco-heroes from Bristol aged 7-21. In addition, we held a specialised workshop with Flycheese, as part of our ongoing partnership.

·         Continued our local community outreach and support: We worked with five organisations since our last update. We held workshops with Watershed, Future Brunels, and Bristol Youth Zone 224, as well as supporting Bristol Refugee Rights and Housing Matters.

·         Submitted a funding proposal for a week-long residential stop motion animation camp and development programme for students from diverse backgrounds: We submitted our funding proposal to the BFI in partnership with Calling the Shots. We will know the outcome and share more details on this in our next update.

Priorities for the coming six months (February – August 2026):

Over the next six months, our first priority is to finalise and roll out our new three-year Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Strategy for 2026-2028. This work will build on the strong foundations and successes of our previous strategy, ensuring we continue to learn and improve our work, whilst also responding to future challenges.

2026 is our 50^th anniversary year: an opportunity to celebrate all we have accomplished, and a moment to look ahead and set clear, ambitious goals that support the long-term implementation of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy across all future projects and activities.

In addition, we will continue all of the work already begun and outlined above.

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.