Aardman Animations – the beloved studio behind Morph, Creature Comforts, Shaun the Sheep and Wallace & Gromit – narrowly missed out on an Oscar this weekend. Co-founder David Sproxton believes being employee-owned is what keeps its creative sparkle shining...
Aardman Animations – the beloved studio behind Morph, Creature Comforts, Shaun the Sheep and Wallace & Gromit – narrowly missed out on an Oscar this weekend. Co-founder David Sproxton believes being employee-owned is what keeps its creative sparkle shining...
When claymation-favourites Wallace & Gromit triumphantly returned to our screens this Christmas, with the feature-length film ‘Vengeance Most Foul’, it was like there had never been a 16-year break without them. Ratcheting up a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, the film that featured the return of villain Feathers McGraw was the second most-watched programme on Christmas Day (and the BBC’s most watched show over 28 days). Every Wallace & Gromit feature-length film or short-film has either won or been nominated for an Oscar. Sadly, the studio narrowly missed out on bagging its fourth golden gong at the 2025 ceremony.
It’s all a far-cry from the early days of the company, which was first founded by David Sproxton and Peter Lord in the 1970s – two animator friends who got their big breaks on children’s TV shows Vision On and Take Heart (with Morph), and producing parts of Peter Gabriel’s iconic ‘Sledgehammer’ video. Admitting that he somehow managed to “turn a hobby into a company” Sproxton now takes more of a backseat in the business – but that’s primarily due to a decision he took to morph it (pun intended), into an employee-owned entity.
“I probably started thinking about how best to protect the business as early as 2011,” reflects Sproxton, of his seven-year journey to officially (and legally) transition the business into being employee owned in November 2018. “I’ve always been part of a left-leaning family, and it was while attending the Festival of Ideas in Bristol that year, that I learned of a book called ‘Beyond the Corporation’, by David Erdal. It’s about him inhering a papermill business, but how he was uncomfortable knowing it was everyone else working hard that made him rich.” Says Sproxton: “Although we founded the business, I never really thought Pete (Lord) and I ‘owned’ the company. It was like a family – and that’s when employee ownership first started to make sense.”
As a concept, employee ownership (EO) has been enjoying huge popularity recently – mostly on the promise that they create businesses that employees feel better engaged with, because they hold some sort of ‘stake’ in the company (see bullet points later).
In 2013 there were fewer than 100 employee owned companies in the UK. But since this, this number has increased rapidly.
I never really thought Pete (Lord) and I ‘owned’ the company. It was like a family – and that’s when employee ownership first started to make sense
Between June 2022-June 2023, the number of employee-owned businesses in the UK increased by 37%, with the Employee Ownership Association (who Sproxton says he visited on numerous occasions), reporting that more than 2,000 UK businesses are now employee-owned. According to its own research, EO businesses are 8-12% more productive than their non EO-counterparts, and are 50% more likely to be ‘robust growth champions’ – those that consistently deliver growth in sales, profits, and headcount.
“At the time, not even our accountants knew about employee ownership,” says Sproxton – who confesses to only officially setting the business up as a limited company in 1999. “Had I known about it sooner, I think I probably would have set it up like that from the start.”
Part of the drive to seek out ways to ensure the independence of the business was because Aardman was, by now, starting to attract suitors who simply wanted buy it (including, at one time, Dreamworks, who partnered with Aardman to produce the first full-length Wallace & Gromit movie – The Curse of the Were-Rabbit). But Aardman has famously fought hard to retain its very British charm, and ended its relationship with Dreamworks due to creative differences, and it’s been the threat of another company simply gobbling Aardman up that Sproxton says he didn’t want to see: “We have a very strong IP,” he says. “That makes us attractive. But I didn’t want to see us be sold to a media conglomerate that would try to make what we do cheaper; taking a harder-nosed approach.” He adds: “At the same time, it resonated with us that the people who make us the business we are should also be rewarded.”
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