Jubilanté Cutting is an Attorney-at-Law, animation training coordinator, and project facilitator who is a member of the First Assembly of God Wortmanville church for the last 17 years. She is a graduate of the University of Guyana Law Programme and Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and manages her own private law practice focusing on a wide range of matters in civil, transactional, commercial, and intellectual property law. She pioneered and established the Guyana Animation Network (GAN) to indulge her interest in animation and digital media education which she developed while still in high school.
The Founder and Director of the award-winning Guyana Animation Network said GAN began as a passion of hers. The journey started with her involvement at the Caricom Girls in ICT event in April 2014, a workshop where she was first introduced to animation. With her interest now piqued, she was selected for and eagerly attended another Animation Workshop in Guyana in July 2014. There she learned the principles of animation and developed a short film with a co-participant. Later that year, she was again selected as one of two workshop participants to attend the Animae Caribe Animation and Digital Media Festival in Trinidad and Tobago. Exposure to fascinating animation initiatives that attracted potential investors at the festival, enabled her to identify it as a lacking sector in Guyana. This prompted her to raise awareness and engage interested young people in the arts, animation, and IT, and to establish the Guyana Animation Network, essentially spearheading the growth of the sector.
On July 2, 2016, the Guyana Animation Network (GAN) was formally introduced at an Open Day at the Non-Governmental Organisation, Generation Next, Georgetown, Guyana. GAN is a network founded to utilise its resources to generate and offer access to opportunities for citizens of Guyana’s artistic, creative, and technical communities; to develop the necessary skills and abilities, and to serve the Caribbean Animation Industry. Its combined vision and mission is to lead, activate, and contribute to change in Guyana’s creative and digital industries. So far, GAN has completed summer camps for children and youth to learn creative and digital courses on trending skills, networks, outreaches, and training workshops.
Jubilanté noted that before pursuing her passion for animation, she wondered how contradictory her two streams of endeavours were. However, she was able to leverage her background in law to lay the legal foundation of her network to aid in its preservation. She was also supported in legal expertise by her team, especially when navigating risky situations.
Some of the best memories along the way include meeting parents of young and future animators, talented artists and teachers, winning local, regional and international awards, attending festivals and conferences, connecting with creators from all over the world, and educating secondary school students and teachers about animation and digital media. Jubilanté’s realisation of the extent of young people’s interest in the subject is one of her most cherished experiences while working with GAN.
As a result of GAN, young people in Guyana now have the opportunity to be trained in fields such as animation, voice acting, and script writing. Training individuals to fill jobs in current projects, upcoming initiatives, and collaborative projects is a possibility.
One of GAN’s key challenges, however, is the absence of a facility exclusively for young people working in technological fields like animation and game design. She stated that more Guyanese productions would be exported as valuable assets to portray our own cultural narrative via games, animations, or films if such facilities are made available. The absence of an institution that offers technical training in these fields, such as a diploma or degree-granting programmes, poses a challenge to the industry’s lack of diversity since it prevents us from conveying stories about modern affairs in Guyana and the Caribbean.
Jubilante said the sector could benefit from specialised resources for youth to pursue the arts through technology in fields such as animation and game design, and opportunities to pursue these fields of study at the tertiary level. Such an investment in the education sector would see an explosion of quality local content that portray our own cultural narrative and give us a competitive edge in the Region and further afield. She dreams of one-day seeing examples of animated films sharing the story of Cuffy, other historical facts, or even telling stories about our country’s home and current affairs as compared to animations compiled and aired in the US such as Family Guy and the Simpsons.
Jubilanté maintains a balance between running GAN and her professional life by the grace of God. She is blessed to have a team that offers tremendous support. Her enthusiasm for research has enabled her to find viable solutions and Jubilanté has managed to stay abreast with the latest developments in the animation industry. She also said that keeping up with the newest interests has been made easier by working with friends and young people, particularly those in Generation Z.
Jubilanté anticipates a Guyana Animation Network with complete film production being accomplished in the next five years and has high expectations that they will be able to recruit more local people for specific skills and to provide additional training. Through the completed productions, there are ambitions to obtain worldwide accolades, have the chance for screen productions, compete in film festivals, and encourage organisations and collaborations that allow locals to earn international degrees and certificates at the tertiary level, locally.
Animation is the process of making movies, videos, and computer games in which drawings or models of people and animals appear to move. Anyone interested in the technological prospects offered by Guyana Animation Network is welcome to participate in their growth. When joining the network, Jubilanté encourages anyone with an interest to bring their passion, drive, commitment, and dedication to their artistic or technological development.
