The Black Academy in partnership with Insight Productions have revealed the 11 participants and mentors/trainers for the third iteration of The Black Academy’s Skills Development Program. The program is designed to increase the number of Black Canadians working in the Canadian screen industry and to empower Black Canadian talent to pursue and sustain their careers.
In addition to providing bespoke, paid training, and on-screen credits, the program creates an extraordinary environment in which Black talent can flourish and in which the participants can build a supportive community of like-minded colleagues as well as a vibrant network of co-workers, mentors, trainers, employers, and alumni with whom they can connect to increase employment opportunities. The 2024/25 edition, which began last summer and continues into the spring, consists of six streams: Audio, Post, Producing, Production Management, Wardrobe, and Writing.
In just a few short years, the Skills Development Program has made a tangible impact on the careers of its participants. Alongside The Legacy Awards Head Story Producer/Writer and Skills Development Program mentor Jemeni G, program participants Makayla Campbell (2023), Milca Kuflu (2022), and Grace May Gilbert-Walters (2023) were all nominated for a 2024 Canadian Screen Award in the Best Writing, Variety, or Sketch Comedy category for the 2023 edition of The Legacy Awards. Milca Kuflu was also nominated in the same category in 2023 for her work on the 2022 edition of the show. Further, the program has now crossed the threshold of 10,000 hours of participant training since its inception.
“CSA nominations, thousands of hours of training, on-screen credits – these are exactly the kind of material differences we set out to make when we launched the program with Insight Productions back in 2022,” said Shamier Anderson, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of The Black Academy. “It’s truly remarkable what the participants and the program as a whole have accomplished in such a short time. It speaks to both their talent and ambition and the need for this kind of program.”
“Each year the participants have requested more opportunities to connect with each other and with potential employers and each year we’ve responded with more networking events and ancillary sessions,” said Stephan James, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of The Black Academy. “Our ability to better meet the needs of the participants is dependent on support from our sponsors, so we want to sincerely thank the organizations that had our back this year, and as always, get the word out that we’re looking for more like-minded companies to grow this important initiative.”
The 2024/25 cohort is composed of lindsey addawoo (Producing); Fola Babalola (Production Management); Fiyin Coker (Post-Production); Camille D’Andrade (Post-Production); Lovey Reid Graham (Producing); Howard Hamilton (Post-Production); Paul (Pablo) Joseph (Audio); Chantal Le Hunte (Producing); Liam Myrie (Audio); Yemie Sonuga (Writing); and Cassandra Yeboah (Wardrobe). Collectively completing more than 1100 hours of training (and counting) this year’s participants were all employed on The Legacy Awards, while Fiyin Coker, Lovey Reid Graham, and Fola Babalola have gone on to paid positions on Insight Productions’ Canada’s Ultimate Challenge, The Amazing Race Canada, and on an Insight series in development.
This year’s program saw the addition of new workshops including sessions on financial literacy (hosted by RBC), résumé building, how to join a union or guild (in collaboration with the DGC, WGC, NABET, and IASTE), ‘meet the executives’ sessions with CBC and Telefilm, how to seek representation/agent, and additional networking events – all in direct response to participant feedback.
The 2024/25 program mentors include Jemeni G (Writing/Producing); Zannub Houssein (Wardrobe); Sarah James (Production Management); Muzafar Malik (Post-Production); and Adrian Sterling (Audio).
The 2024/25 Skills Development Program is managed by Hannah Yohannes, Skills Development Program Manager, and overseen by The Black Academy (Gail Case, Executive Director, Morgan Blades, Director of Programming, Tse Daniel, Director of Operations, Teneica Toban, Head of Online Content & Digital Strategy) and Insight Productions (Shannon Farr, Vice President & Executive Producer, and Jordan Rudder, Manager, Production & Partnerships and Producer/Talent Producer). In addition to program management and oversight, Farr and Rudder also serve as mentors in the Producing stream.
The Black Academy’s Skills Development Program funding partners are Canada Media Fund, CIBC, Ontario Creates, RBC Royal Bank, Telefilm Canada, and TurboTax. The Audio Stream
