Despite being months away from departing her role, National Screen Institute (NSI) CEO Joy Loewen has been stepping on the gas when it comes to the 37-year-old not-for-profit’s work to support and train up-and-coming screen industry members.

Part of that is due to Loewen’s tendency to rely on her instincts and say “yes” to new opportunities; as was the case for the Access BIPOC Producers program – presented by the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE) and NSI in partnership with the Canada Media Fund (CMF) – and the PACT (Pledge, Activate, Cultivate, Thrive) cultural competency course created in partnership with the Shine Network Institute.

“I think she is the embodiment of her name,” Marcia Douglas, CMF’s VP, growth and inclusion, tells Playback. “She takes her commitment to her work incredibly seriously, but she also has a deep personal commitment to the people, both to her staff and the participants, of these programs.” Douglas and Loewen are collaborators on Access BIPOC Producers (formerly known as the EAVE On Demand Access Program), which Loewen says was initially started with a phone call by Douglas’ predecessor at CMF, Tamara Dawit, who remains involved with the program as an advisor.

The program, which announced its second cohort this year, is designed to train producers from underrepresented communities on how to access opportunities in the international market, whether through content exports or coproductions. It is “intensely customized,” says Loewen, with careful consideration made from the application and selection stages to ensure it’s meeting the needs of participants.

What has enabled that customization is the increased use of data – both anecdotal and statistical – to see where the greatest needs are, with Loewen noting that participants are seeking more direct support for their businesses, rather than on a project-by-project basis.

Douglas says the program enables producers to “globalize their company.” For example, she says two participants attended the Marché du Film Spotlight Asia program this year in Cannes following their participation in 2022. “Each of them have come away with multiple projects now in development from both features and TV,” she says. “It really is building those bridges for them.”

In the case of PACT, Loewen says she received a “life-changing” email from Shine Network Institute founder Jennifer Podemski (Little Bird) in 2021, asking if she’d be interested in collaborating on the project. What resulted was “one of the most meaningful partnerships and work that I’ve done in my career,” says Loewen.

The 40-minute online certificate course, billed as the first free online Indigenous cultural competency course for the screen sector, is designed for non-Indigenous industry members who are or will be working on Indigenous productions, in order to provide safer and more culturally-inclusive working environments for First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples.

The project received a three-year grant from the federal government’s Department for Women and Gender Equality, and Loewen says the Shine Network played an integral part in securing the grant. “[The NSI] has the nuts and bolts, but we need our community to work with us to help shine a light on areas of growth and development,” she says. “The Shine Network Institute brought that in spades.”

Loewen announced in May that she’ll be departing NSI in June 2024 after more than three years as CEO, leaving plenty of runway for the organization to find her replacement. Her departure will end an accumulated 12 years at the not-for-profit, punctuated with programming and producing roles at organizations such as On Screen Manitoba and CBC.

She hasn’t slowed down in the meantime, with the NSI announcing the Elevate program with Paramount+ Canada and BIPOC TV & Film to provide business development mentorship to BIPOC-owned prodcos. The organization – which has eight other active programs this year, including an accelerator for TikTok creators – is also beginning to formulate its next three-year strategic plan.

While she isn’t ready to announce where she’s off to next, she does have some advice for her successor: “Keep the machine in drive… there’s a lot of road ahead, and you’re catching us at 80 clicks per hour. Let’s take it to 90.”

Image courtesy of the National Screen Institute

This story originally appeared in Playback‘s 2023 Winter issue