The CFC and DHX Media have announced a multi-year partnership – dubbed The DHX Experience – with the aim of developing homegrown creative talent for the family, kids and tween content spaces.

Integrating DHX-led workshops and practical exercises into the CFC’s film, TV, music and acting programs, the initiative will engage roughly 40 screen-based entertainment industry professionals a year. In addition to integrating workshops into existing CFC programs, the initiative will also include separate programs that can be offered to those who are not currently residents at the CFC. Those programs include a hands-on music creation workshop, pitching and development bootcamps and a British Columbia-based voice for animation workshop.

The DHX Experience is kicking off with a symposium being held at Toronto-based CFC headquarters on Wednesday, to be lead by DHX executives and industry professionals who work in the kids space. The event will provide an overview of the kids/tween/family world, and it will initiate a series of workshops and bootcamps to further explore creative processes and best practices.

The CFC has been thinking for some time about what it could do to be more active in the kids and tween space, said chief programs officer Kathryn Emslie, and that talks over a potential partnership began in summer 2014.

“We just felt that kids, family and tweens has sometimes not been looked at as seriously as a really exciting creative and business form for our talent, and we just felt that was a huge missed opportunity…so the opportunity to build something much more substantial and in-depth is incredibly exciting for us,” Emslie told Playback Daily.

With this being the first of a multi-year deal, Emslie noted that this is still very much a pilot project, which will be honed in subsequent years.

The initiative launches as Canada’s role within the global children’s TV industry continues to grow, thanks in part to substantial tax grants and a high-quality talent pool. On top of its strong animation sector, the country is gaining a reputation as a burgeoning breeding ground for high-quality TV sitcoms and dramas that target tweens and teens.

And Halifax-based DHX, through its rapid acquisitions of Canadian companies and channels such as former Astral Media-owned Family, remains front and center, with its revenues increasing by 127% in fiscal 2015 to the tune of US$200 million.

With files from Wendy Goldman Getzler, Kidscreen