VIisionTV announced the winners of its first Cultural Diversity Drama Competition on Oct. 22 at a celebration of the multifaith network’s 15th anniversary. Three Canadian production teams were awarded $100,000 to develop and produce one-hour dramas.

According to CDDC executive producer Joan Jenkinson and cocreator of the competition Chris Johnson, head of programming at Vision, the filmmakers designed their dramas around the limitations of the budget with some very innovative results, recognizing the opportunity this competition affords.

‘They’re thinking of [this project] as their calling card,’ says Jenkinson. ‘We’re not only looking at doing one show, but also at the potential for pilots and we’re already making connections internationally to line things up, so that if we do have something, it has the potential to have legs to get made into a series.’

According to Jenkinson, finding programming that reflects cultural diversity is difficult, and this competition is something Vision needed to do to get diverse drama on the air.

‘When we were looking for programming to put on our schedules, we found that outside of Canada, there is very, very little available, and for what is available there is major competition,’ says Jenkinson. ‘We really needed to create some of that programming.’

Vision heard pitches from six out of 88 submissions and decided on three.

Novelette’s is a comedic drama about the stylists and partons of a hair salon in Toronto’s Eglinton Avenue West Caribbean neighbourhood, to be directed and executive produced by Tonya Lee Williams. Creator/writer/producer Gerry Atwell’s Hotel Babylon focuses on a group of new Canadians, skilled professionals in their homelands, who are working menial jobs around a hotel in downtown Winnipeg. Producers Leonard Cervantes and Romeo Candido will make St. Jamestown, about a successful television producer volunteering as a media arts teacher at a Toronto community center for disadvantaged youth.

-www.visiontv.ca