Speed up the A38 and M5 to do an animation art day working with found photographic film images at Bridgwater College in Somerset. Near Exeter a couple of swallows hang upside down from the telegraph wires, like clothes pegs. In a west-side field near Cullompton, a old oak tree that's been dead for years has suddenly sprouted leaves along one bony branch.

In the morning the students make a brilliant mash-up animated film cutting, drawing, scraping, bleaching and then re-editing a 16mm Butlins' promo for schools from the 1980s. After lunch we recycle old 35mm art history slides (donated by Dave T at PCAD) using physical manipulation techniques, and the students record their image sequences using a digital camera.

It's a great place with a good atmosphere and loads of Macs everywhere. By 5pm all the reanimated still and moving images are copied onto a hard drive, and we're done.

I put the question What is animation? on the whiteboard in the studio. During the day students and staff wrote their ideas:

A nice pleasant distraction that serves other kinds of filming!
A breath of life into motionless objects and images
An Exploration of moving images
An expression of ideas that cannot be expressed sufficiently in still images or even words
Moving Art
Visual expression of thoughts/emotions/feelings documented for viewing pleasure
I feel like Dr Frankenstein, "Look it's moving, it's alive, ITS ALIVE!"
Something that can take you out of the 'EVERY DAY' and put you into a place that's completely unknown to you
The stars are beautiful

... and their aliases:

MERCURY
JOBIWAN
kinkywillow
Roadie
Reetpetite
Stargirl
Happy Kid
T*tal Idiot
Stan the man

Thanks for a fantastic and poetic film day. And thank you to the nice teacher for making us a cup of tea when he got back from Bristol - much appreciated.