During 35 years in VANIMA, more than 400 youth authors had made over 300 films through workshops and yearly groups within the school year. VANIMA holds up to 250 hours of work with children and youth yearly.
Since 2012, the city of Varaždin has opened a new cultural activity – audiovisual activity, and has appointed the organization VANIMA as the activity head. In doing so, it has granted the organization a 4 year usage period of the then closed city cinema Gaj, and so a program named „Kino Galerija“ was created. Through continued work of the organization, the city cinema was preserved and digitalised, and is now used to hold regular programs. Further development of the cinema and the audiovisual activity in the City of Varaždin, whose foundation was laid by VANIMA, was directed towards an institutional level, and VANIMA continues work with children and youth, and the organization VAFI & RAFI – an international children and youth animated film festival.
VANIMA regularly cooperates with the Centre for Children with Special Needs “Tomislav Špoljar” to organize animation workshops for students with special needs.
The head of the Film-Creative studio VANIMA, along with partners, has formulated and held a 4-day workshop in June 2019, the 1. animated film workshop for adults from the Varaždin County, whose aim is to introduce the skills of animation into kindergarten groups, as well as elementary and middle schools. This way of educator training has received a large response during the pandemic, through online workshops aimed at interested education workers from the entire territory of Croatia.
“Basics of media literacy” is the name of an e-guide for middle school students authored by the head of VANIMA and external partners. The guide contains theoretical basics and instructions for using free e-tools to create animated films, videos, comics and photography.
During the pandemic, in the scope of the Day of Media Literacy, for the need to increase film literacy, a video collection “How to watch animated films” was made.
The target demographic of the studio VANIMA are children and youth from 8 to 18 years old. They are given an opportunity during the school year to work on animated films as regular members of the organization, three times a week. In addition, during the month of June, 2 to 3 multiple day film workshops are held which, aside from animation, include other types of cinematography (live-action, documentary, experimental films). The workshops are aimed towards students of elementary and high schools who want to get familiar with working on animated films.
VANIMI members have been working with parents, educational workers for the past 3 years, who then transfer their acquired knowledge on making animated films onto their students.