Guyana Animation Network (GAN) Inc. is a non-profit company in Guyana, driven by youth, creativity, the arts, animation, game development, digital media, and technology. GAN has ventured into one of the most unconventional causes in Guyana and the Caribbean with the vision to lead, activate and contribute to change in Guyana’s Animation and Digital Media Industries.
GAN was founded in 2016 by Jubilanté Cutting, a lawyer and social and animation/digital media activist, when she was just 19 years old. She was inspired to establish GAN after noting the lack of investment, training, education, and employment of creative youth in animation, gaming and digital solutions in Guyana and other small state developing countries in the Caribbean. She was inspired by a regional Animation Festival that connected young Caribbean animation and game enthusiasts with potential investors or investment for their ideas and prototypes.
GAN actively provides technical digital and creative skills training opportunities to children, youth and young adults in Guyana within the Global and Local Animation & Digital Media Industries by connecting them with leading local and global experts. GAN’s main activities are aimed at inspiring innovation and creativity through training and idea generation. Prior to 2022, GAN’s core activities included Digital and Creative Summer Camps which focused on digital painting, crayon etching, digital illustration, game design and development, introduction to 2D animation, 3D modelling and game robotics. GAN also hosted ‘Creative Connections’ masterclasses and ‘Girls in ICT’ to target up-and-coming creators and high-school aged girls, respectively. Since 2016 GAN has directly trained 471 participants in a range of digital and new media technology skills and has recently launched its own studio, GAN Studios, to create jobs in animation and digital media for young people.
In 2022, GAN partnered with its new venture GAN Studios to host animation pipeline-specific training to create and build a local, regional, and diasporic workforce. Inspired by GAN’s desire to build the Animation & Digital Media Industries in Guyana and the Caribbean, GAN Studios began embarking on its mandate to “…develop and produce original Guyanese and Caribbean animation I.P. from Guyana and the Caribbean.” To date, GAN Studios has collaboratively produced twenty-two animation scriptwriters; twenty-four creators exposed to storyboarding for animation; ten voiceover artists for animation and gaming, and 1 Guyanese animation I.P. is in development.
GAN is among fourteen other Youth Ventures Programme (YVP) grant recipients selected to receive project funding and technical support from The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust (QCT). Through the YVP, QCT funding will go towards making the necessary pivot and shift of GAN’s programming that is needed for GAN to become an employer, skills trainer and outsourcer of graphic design, App/ games, and animation. Through GAN Studios, GAN has already hired 4 scriptwriters, 6 artistic talent, 6 voiceover talent and 2 administrative support talent for its animation I.P. currently in development. Collaboratively with GAN Studios, GAN has also enlisted 10 global experts to support the training and I.P. development of its ongoing employment, skills training and outsourcing drive.
For more on GAN and on its past and upcoming trainings, visit www.animateguyana.com
