David Walliams, Miranda Hart, Catherine Tate and Rik Mayall lead the stellar cast providing the voices for the children’s characters from Evil Stella to Captain Iron Ears. Funded by Legacy Trust UK and BP, with additional support and resources from the BBC, the film has been brought together by Tate and the creative magic of Aardman Animations.

You have moved into more of a producer role since setting up your own production company, Arthur Cox, producing successful films such as Matthew Walker’s John and Karen. How involved are you in the production stages of the animation with this role and what do you enjoy about this position? Eleven-year-old Beanie's bland life is changed for ever when he is sent on a mission. Armed only with laser lip-gloss and a pair of blend-in pants he has to save his parents from Evil Stella and return the Golden Nit to its rightful place at the heart of the sun, thereby saving the universe. I would love to but the opportunity I had was a kind of perfect storm that doesn’t come along very often.The cultural Olympiad funding, the Tate’s support and Aardman asking me to be involved. It would be difficult ( but not impossible ) to do something on the same scale. I do have loads of ideas about how we could develop the idea though – doing a live action approach, or a series or a feature and we are looking at ways to develop the concept.The Tate was the perfect partner for the project ( along with CBBC of course) because they gave the whole thing a really strong environment. The workshops were framed in the context of looking at art works and they had a massive influence and what the children drew and wrote. Much of the initial story came from a workshop in Tate Liverpool where we showed the children Picasso’s Weeping Woman ( which was there as part of the Picasso Peace and Freedom exhibition), we asked why they thought she was crying and within the context of a script workshop – where they shouted out ideas, developing on each other thoughts; we got an amazing story chain about a girl called Diana whose hair grew 5 meters every 5 seconds, it grew so fast she had to wash it in the Mersey, one day a dead kitten fell out, her only friends were the nits that lived in her hair etc etc…quite dark but quite brilliant material. The main thing I learnt from the project was that children really soak up the visual world around them so it is very very important to expose them to good design early on… even if they don’t speak about it – it definitely has a massive effect we could see it clearly in the drawings.

Around 2,000 children will see their own work in the film. "It has been a collaborative effort from the get-go," said Burton. "We've seen it more as a big community movie crew that has crowdsourced the film." The cream of British comedy has provided additional voices for the film including Sanjeev Bhaskar, Ralf Little, Miriam Margolyes, Lucy Montgomery, Vic Reeves and Alexei Sayle. Two children will provide the voices of Beanie - Bobby Fuller, known for his role of Jake on CBBC’s Sadie J - and his older sister Beryl - Rachel Rawlinson. Throughout her time lecturing she also managed to maintain her career as a commercial director in animation; creating MTV idents and music promos with John Parry, before joining Picasso Pictures in 1994. Here, she began directing huge campaigns for Boots No7 and Avaya Communications, as well as commercials for big name brands such as Sanatogen and Virgin Megastores. The reason for doing this was to obtain subtlety in the characters and their relationships – in their facial expressions and movements – I just don’t think I could do that with drawings. Some people can but not me.David Walliams, Miranda Hart, Catherine Tate and Rik Mayall will lead the stellar cast of The Tate Movie Project’s film, The Itch of the Golden Nit, voicing the characters devised by children. The Tate Movie Project is the first of its kind – an animation made by and for children. The half hour animation has been created from thousands of drawings, sound effects and story ideas by children from across the UK . Since then Sarah combined her love of animation with teaching, working as a lecturer at Humberside University, then The National Film and Television School and as Head of Animation at Savannah College for Art and Design, in Georgia, USA. As it was lots to do and remember we were glad we practised before everyone arrived. We did this by interviewing some of the facilitators who had run the Tate workshops.

Ha – well surprisingly sometimes I think I get more creative freedom in commercial projects than with the films. You are never entirely free if someone is funding you, but certainly with Tate all the direction came from the kids not from the top- whereas when we made 8 minutes idle we had 4 or 5 executive producers to convince at every stage. With TV commercials I learnt a long time ago that its really not about ‘creative freedom’– you are helping your client sell a product and you can offer your best advice to help them create a fantastic and memorable commercial – if you expect to have total creative freedom you will always be disappointed. Anyway I like to have something to rail against. Aided by his shouty older sister Beryl, who has been shrunk to the size of a doll by one of Stella’s electric bubbles, Beanie sets out on a crazy adventure to rescue his parents and save the universe. We asked them all questions about how they were involved in the film, what it was like and why they thought it was an important project. Sarah Cox, the film’s director, recognised children’s ability to work with animation some time ago. After studying for an animation degree at Liverpool, she began working with the community film collective ‘Open Eye’, running animation workshops with children in deprived areas of Liverpool. She then moved on to the Royal College of Art and, a year after graduating, completed the film 3 Ways to Go, which was commissioned as part of the ANIMATE! Scheme and won Best Film under 10 Minutes at the British Animation Awards. The Tate Movie Project has given thousands of children across the UK the opportunity to bring their creativity and imagination to life. At CBBC we aim to produce entertaining and engaging programmes for children, which is exactly what this project is about and I am thrilled that we have been able to support it.” Damian Kavanagh, Controller of CBBCJane Burton, creative director of Tate Media, said the team was extremely happy with the result. "We wanted it to be something that people would enjoy watching as much as the children enjoyed making it," she said. Aided by his shouty older sister Beryl, who has been shrunk to the size of a doll by one of Stella’s electric bubbles, Beanie sets out on a crazy adventure to rescue his parents and save the universe. The film has as its hero 11-year-old Beanie who embarks on a mission to save his parents from Evil Stella (Catherine Tate). At the film's centre is the eponymous Golden Nit (Walliams) who needs to be returned to his rightful place in the sun for the universe to be saved. You studied for an MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art which is renowned for turning out successful animators. What do you think it is about this institution that keeps producing such great talent? The cream of British comedy has provided additional voices for the film including Sanjeev Bhaskar, Ralf Little, Miriam Margolyes, Lucy Montgomery, Vic Reeves and Alexei Sayle. Two children provide the voices of Beanie - Bobby Fuller, known for his role of Jake on CBBC’s Sadie J - and his older sister Beryl - Rachel Rawlinson.

Eleven-year-old Beanie's bland life is changed for ever when he is sent on a mission. Armed only with laser lip-gloss and a pair of blend-in pants he has to save his parents from Evil Stella and return the Golden Nit to its rightful place at the heart of the sun, thereby saving the universe." We caught up with Sarah to learn a bit more her and her role in Arthur Cox, as well as discover more about the process of working with children to create the fantastic film, The Itch of the Golden Nit. Interview Lastly, what can we look forward to seeing from Sarah Cox/Arthur Cox in the future? Can you give tell us anything about Arthur Cox’s involvement with the upcoming adaptation of Graham Chapman’s A Liar’s Biography? The film followed a unique production process. For those who don’t know could you explain a little bit how about the project came together? Burton admiited that with so many children involved it could have been a recipe for disaster. "I was quite nervous at the outset that we might end up with a soup of disparate parts – but that, I think, is where the genius of Aardman comes in."You walk into a little booth, they say 'read these words', you read the words and then they put the animation to it" Dom said.