Earlier this week, the Stratagem Internship Program, in partnership with HOMAD (Heads of Media Art and Design at Ontario Colleges) completed its first ever multi-college semester-long internship program.
40 students participated with 8 faculty leads at 6 Ontario colleges.
Canadore College – North Bay, Ontario
Seneca College – Toronto, Ontario
Georgian College – Barrie, Ontario
Niagara College – Niagara, Ontario
Fanshawe College – London, Ontario
St Clair College – Windsor, Ontario
The media arts and design students did an outstanding job completing the internship and fulfilling the final presentation requirements through adversity, as they had to transition from onsite learning to remote work and e-learning quite quickly when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the province. Final presentations were delivered via Zoom on April 15, 2020.
The objective of Stratagem Internship Program is to work with students within Ontario Colleges to build a knowledge library of resources that support the growth of film, TV and screen-based production in the province, in order to contribute to strategies that contribute to sustained success.
Ontario has a wealth of infrastructure and human capital that holds potential to support the growth of the film and television sectors. This potential is more readily activated when better quality information can be brought to the strategies the serve them.
Some internship project examples include:
- A local “Film Industry Yellow Pages” for a given region, containing an inventory of properties and assets that could be of assistance to location scouts and producers, and a list of contacts;
- A framework for training and education design that consider the creative jobs of the future;
- An analysis of factors that enable better use of international co-production treaties;
- An inquiry into the factors that better support gender and ethnic diversity in Canadian film and television;
- A “readers digest” of local and national creative industries research that is distributed to a broad pool of stakeholders.Participating students engaged in industry research under the guidance of an appointed faculty member at the college, and had opportunities to network with people relevant to their own career objectives to enhance their contact base upon graduation.
Students completed the internship experience with a better understanding of the creative industries, and their place within it.
An online learning management system facilitated the sharing of research across teams from different colleges, and promoted cross-institutional relationships.
The experience culminated with a presentation by students on their research findings, in front of other student teams from colleges across Ontario.
Stratagem plans on scaling up this project dramatically in partnership with more colleges in summer 2020. We are delighted by the work of this group of students and their process has demonstrated the potential of e-learning platforms to scale training and internships for the film and creative industries across and Ontario and beyond.