This stop-motion animation was commissioned as part of a series of artists' residencies sponsored by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media under the auspices of their Decade of Centenaries programme.

We're delighted to present An Enchanted Exploration of the Military Archives - a stop-motion animation produced by Studio 9, a Dublin based studio run by Joe Coveney and John O'Connell.

As the successful applicants, Studio 9 addressed this brief by creating an animation that introduces primary school-aged children to both the Military Archives and the Decade of Centenaries in an age appropriate and appealing manner. The animation sees a group of curious pupils magically shrink in size, learning about the decade through archival documents and a poetic narrative, as they are guided across the desks and shelves of the Archives.

The piece was commissioned as part of a series of artists' residencies sponsored by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media under the auspices of their Decade of Centenaries programme. The purpose of the artists' residencies was to elicit and sponsor creative responses to material from the War of Independence and Civil War period held by Irish cultural institutions.

This residency was an exciting opportunity for us at the Military Archives and one which we were extremely keen to embrace. From the start, the team was eager to engage and collaborate with less common artistic formats than are commonly associated with artistic residencies, and particularly interested in exploring the areas of animation or graphic novels.