After years of being a hub for animation professionals in Toronto, the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International (TAAFI) is looking to expand its mandate.

Created in 2011 by Ben McEvoy, Rich Duhaney, JoAnn Purcell, Mark Jones, Barnabas Wornoff and Mike Weiss, the annual four-day fest supports animators with industry programming and showcases animated films that celebrate their craft. The organization’s core audience consists of students, budding creatives and more experienced industry professionals.

TAAFI’s exec director McEvoy says during the early years of the festival, the event was trying to be “an entire beast unto itself in one weekend” through its two sections – a film festival and its industry programming.

“It was pretty successful the first few years but we’re a volunteer organization and for us to sustain that level of programming and involvement became harder and harder,” said McEvoy.

Through feedback from attendees and a desire to grow its audience base, TAAFI has decided to spread its programming out with a conference dedicated exclusively to the animation industry, scheduled for early November 2018; smaller masterclass series sprinkled throughout the year; and a film festival for screen enthusiasts, families and kids expected to take place in February.

“[The film festival component] will allow us to do something a little more public-facing, which has been an area that we’ve always struggled with because we know that animation is one of those formats that people love. But when you make it too industry-focused, people aren’t really going to connect with it,” said McEvoy.

Recently, TAAFI kicked off its new programming approach with the premiere of Disney/Pixar’s Bao and a behind-the-scenes talk with the short’s Canadian director, Domee Shi.

Done in partnership with Disney/Pixar, the talk, which took place on June 11 at Cineplex Yonge-Dundas to a sold out audience, is an example of the smaller masterclasses the festival wants to put on throughout the year. These smaller events allow the festival to continue to engage with animators while also highlighting talent a public audience might not have have heard about, says McEvoy.

With its new three-pronged approach, TAAFI hopes to generate more revenue to allow it to build out its team and hire a full-time exec director, creative director and more administration. The team has slowly started this process through hiring a part-time administrator.

“For us the real move here is TAAFI has been around for eight years. We’ve done some pretty good stuff but what we’re really trying to do is set ourselves up to really try to become something meaningful,” said McEvoy.

TAAFI’s conference will take place on Nov. 2 to 4, 2018. More information about the organization’s film festival and masterclass series are expected to be released soon.