14/10/20 • News & Happenings

Q3 update from Lighthouse

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If you had asked us last year how we envisioned 2020 unfolding we wouldn’t have predicted a pandemic and a nationwide lockdown. Despite all the hurdles along the way, we have powered into Q4 at full speed ahead. Here’s some of our news from the last quarter.

Little Ellen

Work is continuing at full speed ahead on all of our projects, including Little Ellen which we announced last quarter. Of course, Covid-19 has proved a testing time for us at Lighthouse, not least when it comes to talent attraction, which is a shame as one of our favourite things to do is meet future hires at job fairs and animation festivals. Luckily, many of these have taken on new forms in 2020 and, as ever, adaptability is the name of the game here. As such, our recruitment team has been busy participating in new initiatives, such as August’s Virtual Recruitment Expo, and is happy to report that the crew for Little Ellen is almost at capacity! We are still interested in speaking with FX candidates both for LE and another project – so if you would like to join our merry crew then check out our Careers page.

Training and development

We know how important transferable skills are in the creative industries and we feel lucky that our crew members possess such a diverse mix of backgrounds and skillsets. That’s why we want to help people learn more about animation and its many different entry paths. In September, we launched a call for expressions of interest in future potential training courses, which we may run alongside our partners at Cartoon Saloon. We had a huge response and have been given lots to think about should we decide to develop such courses – more news on this over the coming months.

We are also happy to welcome our three graduate trainees who we have hired as part of the Screen Skills Ireland and Animation Skillnet’s Animation Traineeship 2020. The traineeship started on Monday 28th of September, with the selected participants joining the studio for a duration of three months. This year’s trainees include Polly Holland (Animation), Eoin McLoughlin (Builds & Rigging) and Adam Powell (Animation). Be sure to check out our social media pages over the coming months to see how our trainees are enjoying their time at Lighthouse and all that they have been learning.

 

Let them eat cake

Unfortunately, renewed restrictions on numbers for outdoor gatherings meant that Lighthouse had to cancel its summer picnic at the last minute – leaving specially ordered cakes from talented local baker, Olivia Lyng, at risk of going to waste. Not so unfortunate for the intrepid crew members, however, who stepped up to the challenge and helped to give those cakes a home!

We are busy planning our Christmas event this year, which will no doubt be entirely different to last year’s party. However, perseverance is one of our core values – so we know we’ll make it work and have a blast no matter what.

Welcome to our new hires

The last few months have also seen us welcome a host of new hires, not just for Little Ellen but also for many of our other projects too. Among our new recruits are two important hires for Lighthouse; Rob Grimes as our new Head of Legal, and Emilie Walmsley as our new Executive Producer. Both Rob and Emilie are strategic hires for Lighthouse, and we look forward to working with them to meet all our ambitious goals for 2021 and beyond.

That’s all for now – stay tooned for more updates!

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