Announcing the Recipients of the Creative Export Canada Program: Six Organizations from Ontario Will Shine on the Global Stage

The first projects selected for the new export funding program are being announced

TORONTO, April 16, 2019 /CNW/ - Creativity and innovation were in the spotlight today when the Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion, visited Toronto to announce the first projects to receive funding from the new Creative Export Canada program, launched by Canadian Heritage last June. Minister Ng made the announcement on behalf of the Honourable Pablo Rodriguez, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism.

The 20 projects chosen, which include 6 by organizations from Ontario, will share a total of nearly $7.8 million in funding. 

Exporting is vitally important to Canada's creative industries. It gives creators an opportunity to shine on the world stage and generates significant economic benefits at home by creating jobs and fostering social prosperity. 

Minister Ng said she was proud to see local companies thrive and carve out such enviable places for themselves on the global stage. She took the opportunity to reaffirm the Government of Canada's commitment to help businesses in the creative sector maximize their export potential.

Representatives from Guru Animation and Inner City Releasing, two of the organizations funded by Creative Export Canada, were on hand to talk about how important the funding is to the success of their projects.

The Creative Export Canada program supports Canadian organizations ready to export a project that showcases creative content. Its mission: make Canada's creative industries more profitable. Creative Export Canada will accept new applications for funding in the fall of 2019.

Quotes

"Canada is full of talented creators whose work is loved throughout the world. The new Creative Export Canada program allows businesses in our creative sector to succeed and make a name for themselves on the global stage. The Government of Canada is proud to support their ongoing pursuit of innovation and growth."

— The Honourable Pablo Rodriguez, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism

"Our government is helping Canadian businesses and entrepreneurs start up, scale up and access new markets, and this includes Canada's immensely talented creative industries. Our government's investment in these Canadian companies will help build Canada's global brand as a leader who puts its creative industries at the centre of its future economy."

—The Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion

Quick Facts

Recipients (in alphabetical order)

Apollo Boutique Musicale Inc.– Music

Discovery Centre International – Design

Éditions Boîte à livres – Publishing

Éditions Chouette – Publishing

Festival Fantasia – Audiovisual

Guru Animation – Audiovisual

Inner City Releasing – Audiovisual

LyricFind – Music

Moment Factory – Interactive digital media

Organisme Schéma – Design

Partenariat Quartier des spectacles – Design

Peggy Baker Dance Projects – Performing arts

Playmind – Interactive digital media

Productions Folle avoine – Publishing and music

Qaggiavuut! Nunavut Performing Arts Centre – Performing arts

SING! Toronto Vocal Arts Festival – Performing arts

Squeeze Studio Animation – Audiovisual

Trio Orange – Audiovisual

Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) – Audiovisual

Why Not Theatre – Performing arts

In 2016, Canada exported $16 billion in creative products, which amounts to 2.5 percent of Canada's total exports.

The arts and culture sector creates more than 650,000 direct jobs and countless spin-off jobs. It also accounts for 2.8 percent of Canada's overall gross domestic product.

Canada's Creative Export Strategy, including the new Creative Export Canada funding program, gives businesses and organizations in the creative sector the tools and mechanisms they need to successfully export their creative content. In this way, the government is helping Canada's creative sector shine on the world stage.

Associated Links

Creative Export Canada

Creative Export Strategy

Launch of Creative Canada – A Vision for Canada's Creative Industries

Backgrounder

Announcing the Inaugural Recipients of the Creative Export Canada Program!

The first group of projects to benefit from the brand new export funding program have been unveiled

QUEBEC

APOLLO MUSIC STORE INC.

The Company
An innovative online music platform that meets the musical needs of advertising agencies and brands around the world.

The Project
Their B2B web application, allows promotional video producers to find the right music for their brand films and spots and obtain the rights instantly. The web app features several Canadian artists. Many partners support the project.

MOMENT FACTORY

The Company
Moment Factory brings people together. The company's shows and destinations reinvent entertainment by offering people new experiences. From concerts to flagship stores and urban spaces, Moment Factory's goal is to create a sense of collective amazement and connection.

The Project
Worldwide promotion and distribution of multimedia formats.

SQUEEZE STUDIO ANIMATION

The Company
A team of professionals dedicated to providing 3D character animation services for high-quality animation and original works.

The Project
Launch their animation series Cracké and Jax internationally; distribute them on traditional and non-traditional platforms, promote the brand in various formats (for example, mobile games and promotional material), and issue licences.

TRIO ORANGE

The Company
Trio Orange has become a reference in the television industry thanks to its wide variety of outstanding shows that have been broadcast around the world. It is recognized for the creative excellence of its productions and its in-depth knowledge of the global television market. Specializing in the development of original digital and television content, Trio Orange is also a leader in programming for young audiences.

The Project
Produce television programs for export; the productions are recorded so as to facilitate translation (dubbing or subtitles). With this project, Trio Orange wants to increase its revenues and expand its international distribution channels.

LA BOÎTE À LIVRES ÉDITIONS INC.

The Company
This publisher of educational materials offers educators simple and concrete tools that meet the needs of today's schools.

The Project
Promote their educational resources and those of other French-language Canadian publishers to public schools in France through Tactileo, a digital learning platform used by all public schools in France. The project is supported by the French government.

FANTASIA FESTIVAL

The Company
The Fantasia International Film Festival is recognized as the largest and most influential genre film festival in North America, a leader on the genre film scene and one of the country's most popular festivals. With an emphasis on imaginative cinema from Asia, Europe and the Americas, Fantasia presents a diverse range of unique and powerful personal perspectives.

The Project
Produce programming for the Frontières forum in Helsinki, Finland, and the Frontières platform in Cannes, France. Frontières is an international co-production market and networking platform focused on genre film financing and co-production between Europe and North America, and other emerging markets.

PLAYMIND

The Company
PLAYMIND specializes in mobile, VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), console and event-based video games, digital interactions, and immersive environments for international brands, amusement parks, arcades, movie theatres, casinos, live events, festivals and shopping centres.

The Project
Export and promote the PlayBox and other PLAYMIND interactive games for large-scale events. The PlayBox is an interactive game housed in a standard shipping container that is easy to customize and move.

QUARTIER DES SPECTACLES PARTNERSHIP

The Company
A non-profit organization with some 60 active members, its board of directors is made up of representatives of the cultural, institutional, education and business sectors, the City of Montréal, and residents. The Partnership allows the main players in the region to work together on joint initiatives. It is supported by the City of Montréal and various partners.

The Project
Export interactive installations by various Quebec creative companies (for instance, 21 balançoires, an installation of musical swings) that have proved popular with the general public. The project will build on existing partnerships and identify new partners.

CHOUETTE PUBLISHING

The Company
A children's book publisher that publishes under the imprints Caillou, CrackBoom! Books and City Monsters.

The Project
Launch a high-quality e-commerce destination for North American consumers wishing to purchase Caillou products such as books, toys, DVDs and apps, including some products that would be unique to this platform. DHX and Imports Dragon are project partners.

PRODUCTIONS FOLLE AVOINE

The Company
Owner of the publisher La Montagne Secrète, which publishes stories and songs intended to introduce children to the amazing power of literature and music through imaginative worlds filled with poetry and humour.

The Project
Continue to develop their international strategy to ensure wider distribution of their children's music books, a growing sector.

L'ORGANISME SCHÉMA

The Company
The mission of L'Organisme Schéma is to support initiatives and promote Canadian design internationally. It exports entrepreneurship and local creativity by creating new meeting and business opportunities.

The Project
Montréal à Milano (Montréal in Milan) will promote Canadian design internationally through the installation of two exclusively Canadian showrooms on Milan's Via Tortona for one year. The project is produced in partnership with Archiproducts, the most powerful architecture and design search engine in the world.

ONTARIO

PEGGY BAKER DANCE PROJECTS

The Company
Peggy Baker Dance Projects is a charitable non-profit organization led by one of Canada's foremost contemporary dance artists, Peggy Baker. It is dedicated to offering experiences of significance, personal connection, and transformative potential to audiences through the power and beauty of the art of dance. Distinguished from the outset by collaborations with extraordinary creators and performers, the company has built an exceptional body of work and a growing slate of education, engagement, and enrichment programs for all ages and abilities.

The Project
Export Who we are in the dark to Europe. Who we are in the dark is a contemporary dance performance combining the choreography of iconic Peggy Baker with live music from members of the internationally recognized Canadian band Arcade Fire.

SING! TORONTO VOCAL ARTS FESTIVAL

The Company
SING! is Canada's premier a cappella festival. Amazing sounds of unaccompanied human voices come together for 10 days featuring pop, jazz, folk, gospel, choral, world, barbershop, and classical music. SING! brings a star-studded lineup of international headliners and industry experts to Toronto for performances and workshops.

The Project
Include a SING!-branded event at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival—the world's largest performing arts festival—and launch a satellite SING! festival in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

WHY NOT THEATRE

The Company
Why Not Theatre is an agile international theatre company based in Toronto, rooted in the values of innovation, community and collaboration. The work of Why Not Theatre is inventive, cross-cultural, and explores differences. Why Not Theatre is more than just a theatre company: it develops creative strategies to build a healthier and stronger arts ecology.

The Project
Increase the company's capacity to support large-scale international touring of culturally diverse Canadian theatre productions in untapped new markets in the developing world.

INNER CITY RELEASING INC.

The Company
Inner City Releasing (ICF) is an independent television and film production company headquartered in Toronto. Guided by over 20 years of experience, ICF develops and produces contemporary, innovative, ground-breaking productions for theatrical and television markets that attract major broadcasters and distributors in Canada, the U.S. and internationally.

The Project
Develop a new business model for distributing films developed by Inner City Films, enabling them to execute and maintain control of their own distribution stream, and thus creating financial efficiencies and opportunities.

GURU ANIMATION STUDIO LTD.

The Company
Guru Studio is a creative-driven entertainment company renowned for creating, developing and producing internationally acclaimed and highly animated television series, including True and the Rainbow Kingdom and its own preschool hit Justin Time, recipient of an Emmy^® nomination, six Annie Award nominations, and a 2014 Canadian Screen Award.

The Project
Export its family-friendly brand (namely True and the Rainbow Kingdom) to global broadcasters, distributors, retailers, game platforms, theme parks and audiences.

LYRICFIND INC.

The Company
A leader in legal lyric licensing, LyricFind has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors—Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony-ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt—and has also built a quality-controlled, vetted database of those lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to those publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

The Project
Translate Canadian artists' song lyrics into multiple languages, including Indigenous languages. LyricFind offers lyrics search, display and synchronization services for all types of platforms and uses. Current clients include Google, Amazon, Universal, Billboard, BMG, Spotify and Pandora.

NOVA SCOTIA

DISCOVERY CENTRE INTERNATIONAL INC.

The Company
Discovery Centre International (DCI) is a global entity incorporated in 2016 as an independent, for-profit subsidiary of The Discovery Centre (DC), Atlantic Canada's preeminent science centre. The mandate of DCI is to build a viable business that will export products and services to other science centres, public and academic institutions, and large corporate clients across Canada and internationally.

The Project
With a mission to become a leading design-build-operate specialist and exporter for science and discovery centres, Discovery Centre International will adapt existing content and create new exhibits for centres in Morocco, Dubai and Jordan.

BRITISH COLUMBIA

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (VIFF)

The Company
The Vancouver International Film Festival, a public celebration, brings the best in contemporary Canadian and international cinema and retrospective programs to British Columbia.

The Project
VIFF Immersed Exhibition will showcase and amplify the international reach of Canada's creative industries specifically through virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) content.

NUNAVUT

QAGGIAVUUT!

The Company
Qaggiavuut! Nunavut Performing Arts is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to strengthening and advocating for Nunavut's performing artists through professional arts training, collaborative opportunities and professional performance production.

The Project
Launch and tour the music and dance ensemble Arctic Song for the World, launch the international tour of Kiviuq Returns, and further develop business relationships with foreign buyers and presenters.

SOURCE Canadian Heritage

(media only), please contact: Simon Ross, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism, 819-997-7788; Media Relations, Canadian Heritage, 819-994-9101, 1-866-569-6155, [e-mail]