If there’s one word to sum up Tammy Frick’s current strategy for the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television (Canadian Academy), it’s “collaboration.”

The Canadian Academy CEO who was appointed last October says she comes from “a very collaborative background” as the former longtime executive director of Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival, and was pleased to see that the organization behind next month’s Canadian Screen Awards works the same way.

As such, the Canadian Academy is exploring “a lot of collaboration” as it discusses with its community and stakeholders where the largest non-profit professional media arts organization in Canada should go next — “paying attention to what’s happening out there, where the gaps are, what we can do better, and how we can engage certain audiences,” Frick tells Playback Daily.

“A lot of the wonderful talent development programs they have, I’d love to see some of that expanded. There’s a lot of talk about furthering our outreach and drawing in bigger audiences, and those conversations are going to continue,” she says.

“There’s nothing really glaringly that I think needs to be changed, necessarily, but I see tons of potential. The work they’re doing around diversity, equity and inclusion is so important. And there’s a lot more opportunity there as well in making sure that we’re removing barriers in a meaningful way and drawing in the right approach and making sure we’re working with the right stakeholders.”

Some of those barriers are being removed for this year’s Canadian Screen Awards with the elimination of actor and actress awards in favour of gender-neutral performance categories for comedy, drama, TV movie and feature film. The change was years in the making and comes after the Canadian Academy implemented gender-neutral awards in 2019 for digital media.

While the number of nominations per category has been increased from five to eight, overall there is a smaller number of nominations and performance categories.

“The end-goal making sure everyone feels welcome and recognized within the academy community is at the forefront. How that ends up playing out is a little bit outside of our control in some ways, but increasing the number of nominations within a category definitely offers more opportunity,” says Frick, noting the difference in the number of spots for nominees this year was “so nominal” compared to previous years.

“I think the gesture of moving in this direction, which is a very progressive direction that makes a lot of sense, really balanced out in the end. Going back to [the notion of] our stakeholders and making sure that we’re collaborating: that’s the voice and the narrative that came through loud and clear to us as well. So we definitely use the approach of ‘what’s our community telling us and how do we move forward?'”

This year’s one-hour Canadian Screen Awards broadcast show, set for April 16 on CBC, will also mark a change with a pre-recorded format hosted by Canadian comedy star Samantha Bee. The show will incorporate footage of acceptance speeches of winners and special moments from several live, in-person Canadian Screen Week ceremonies that will be held alongside cocktail receptions and industry events in Toronto leading up to the broadcast.

“We’ll be able to show, oftentimes, little snippets of things that we might not typically see in the normal broadcast. So we will definitely be honouring the nominees and winners throughout the broadcast. We’ll also have an opportunity to be a little bit more intimate and in-depth with our special award winners through interviews,” says Frick.

“In a normal year we’d be showcasing 12 to 15 awards during the broadcast. This broadcast allows us an opportunity to showcase more Canadian talent, and show what’s happening from a screen-based perspective and how Canadian content is being consumed in other parts of the world as well.”

Frick oversees both the national and Quebec branches of the Canadian Academy. She was appointed as CEO after a search led by the board of directors to replace Beth Janson, who left the organization in April 2022 to become the COO of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Frick says the Canadian Academy has some ideas for more talent development beyond initiatives already established, such as the Warner Bros. Discovery Access Canada: the WBD Access x Canadian Academy Writers Program and WBD Access x Canadian Academy Directors Program, which opened applications for new rounds of participants earlier this year.

Its other programs include Women in Post, launched in October 2021 with presenting partner Netflix; the Executive Residency Program, which provides executive-level access for mid-career industry professionals who are Black, Indigenous, or persons of colour; and the Music Video Production Project, a joint RBCxMusic and Prism Prize initiative.

“We can be connecting more people, so we’re looking at where the need is,” says Frick. “We need to be having more conversations around: Is it needs-based when it comes to regions, is it an overall need, who’s doing what? There’s no sense in doing a lot of duplication, but where are the holes?”

Diversity, equity and inclusion is also “an ongoing focus with the academy.”

“We’re very committed to making sure that our plan for equity and inclusion is at the forefront of everything we do. We’ve taken numerous steps, [including] creating funds to help subsidize underrepresented communities…. That will definitely continue,” says Frick, referring to the Equity and Inclusion Fund to help underrepresented industry professionals fully participate in Canadian Academy events.

“From engaging in a larger audience standpoint, coming off of COVID — COVID was a horrible thing but it also taught us how to do business differently in some cases, and how to reach harder-to-reach audiences through virtual and digital means. So all of that really needs to be fleshed out in a proper strategic plan moving forward. How do we address this new world, how do we broaden that audience, how do we best service them through this new technology? We’re definitely looking at all of those pieces and seeing how that fits together.”

Image courtesy of the Canadian Academy