The Canada Media Fund and Australian government agency Screen Australia have launched an approximately $800,000 incentive fund for interactive digital media projects, the organizations announced Wednesday at the Power to the Pixel conference in London.

The Canada-Australia Interactive Digital Media Incentive is backed by $400,000AUD and $400,000CAD contributed by each body, which will fluctuate depending on the exchange rate of each currency. The fund is intended to support Canada-Australia digital media coproductions. The maximum contribution each selected project will receive through the fund is $300,000, in the form of a non-repayable contribution. How much each country will contribute to each project will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

In addition to launching the fund, the CMF has set up a “Find a Producer” portal on its website to help connect Canadian and Australian producers who may want to work together on projects that would be eligible for the fund.

Guidelines about the program will be available on the CMF and Screen Australia website by Oct. 22, with applications opening on Nov. 1, 2015 and closing Jan. 22, 2016. The winning projects will be selected by a committee made up of reps from both the CMF and Screen Australia, with funding recipients announced in late February 2016.

This latest digital media copro initiative follows the CMF announcing this summer it had renewed a similar program backed by the Canadian funder and New Zealand’s NZ On Air. That fund, titled the Canada-New Zealand Digital Media Fund, distributes $1 million across up to three eligible Canada/New Zealand copro transmedia projects. The transmedia projects supported through that fund’s first round were I Spy With My Five Eyes from Canada’s Jam 3 and New Zealand’s Fume TV, The Nations from iThentic Canada and New Zealand’s Thedownlowconcept and We Are The Remarkables, from Canada’s Story2.OH and New Zealand’s Brown Sugar Apple Hunt.

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