Last year, on November 16th 2020, Creatives Empowered entered the landscape as Alberta’s first virtual non-profit, racialized artist collective. The collective is made up of film, tv and media professionals. I sat down with founder, executive director and board chair Shivani Saini to discuss the inspiration behind Creatives Empowered, the organizations’ milestones and impact on the community.
Saini began her career in junior high school, volunteering at Shaw Cable. She recognized her passion for media and storytelling the first time she saw a film in a movie theatre as a kid. She says, “I was just completely in awe of the whole experience. I didn't realize that stories could be told that way, I didn't realize you could be in an environment with this big screen in front of you – and surround sound – and then be immersed in it. And from that moment on, I wanted to understand everything that I could about how stories were made and told in that way. I wanted to get into the business and completely understand it.” She now has over 25 years of professional TV, film, media and arts experience.
Throughout her career, Saini has had her share of both empowering and disempowering experiences. “In 2019, I started to develop this conscious awareness around those really disempowering experiences, and their relationship to systemic racism, and racial and unconscious bias. And I started to notice patterns that I just hadn't really picked up on throughout my life and throughout my career up until that point,” she says.
The idea for Creatives Empowered (CE) came after “a really empowering experience” doing consulting work for the Reelworld Festival & Screen Institute. During this time, she also became aware of other organizations in the country doing equity seeking work in film and TV.
“So in 2019, after working with [Reelworld], I thought, ‘wow, it would be really great to have something out here.’ But I was too busy with the work I had going on at the time to do anything with it. And then in 2020, COVID became a part of our reality. And we saw what happened in the summertime, after George Floyd was murdered, with protests that took place around the world. And people were starting to have a lot of really important conversations.” With an understanding of varying levels of privilege, Shivani recognized a common thread among the experiences of racialized professionals within the industry – the experience of racial discrimination.
After discussions with Reelworld and BIPOC TV & Film, in 2020, Saini decided to fill the need for “something of our own out here that’s by and for people who work here,” she says. “And so in November of 2020, we launched Creatives Empowered.”
Creative Empowered’s Milestones as a Virtual Organization
Saini credits Creatives Empowered’s early and rapid growth to The Canada Media Fund and its timely Sector Development Support fund. She shares five exciting milestones over the course of the year.
The first mention is Creatives Empowered’s Free Production Assistant Training Program where a cohort of 16 underrepresented community members were selected to participate. Most participants did not have industry experience, which wasn’t a program requirement, however “most of them historically would not have had access to that kind of opportunity in the past. So that's really exciting,” Saini says.
Another milestone was the launch of CE’s new website in July 2021. As a virtual non-profit, Creatives Empowered delivers its mission and activities through their website. “Being a virtual nonprofit also makes our organization and the work that we do accessible to all racialized talent throughout the province, regardless of where they are,” Saini says.
The creation of the opportunities page was another milestone. “So this is basically a free classifieds service for Alberta's cultural sector. And it allows organizations that have opportunities that they want to share with the BIPOC community to post those opportunities for free,” Saini says. “And I can share that one major organization in the country posted their opportunity on our page. They were looking for a new team member. And, one of our film and TV training candidates found the opportunity on our page, applied for it, and was able to get the job. And that was a job that paid $50,000 a year and it was virtual. And there was another position that was posted just recently on the page that pays over $100,000 a year.”
After that, Saini cites the events and resources page of CE’s website. “We have two types of events. So we do events that are for the general public. And those are the events that you can watch on our website because they streamed live and they're available on demand after the fact. And then we do events that are specifically for artists and creatives who self-identify as BIPOC. And those events are really important because they create spaces that become safe for folks who live and work here in Alberta, to talk openly about their perspectives, their experiences, their challenges, their needs as racialized artists and creatives.”
And last, Saini says “when it comes to the film and television side of Alberta's cultural sector, we are making a lot of inroads and establishing relationships and also becoming a key stakeholder in the industry. And I think that that's also an important milestone as well.”
Goals For 2022 and Beyond
“One of our goals is to make sure that Creatives Empowered continues to get the support that it needs here in Alberta, from the cultural sector,” Saini says. What are Creative Empowered’s goals for 2022 and beyond? You can find the answer within its mission’s five main pillars. “So all of the core activities that we do stem from those five pillars,” she says.
In just one year, Creatives Empowered’s impact is very clear. “The simple fact that we exist, and that we started it, we created it, we put it out there. And that we're still here is not only an accomplishment, but a significant contribution that is making it clear that Creatives Empowered isn't just a key stakeholder in the cultural sector, we're actually a part of the sector's critical infrastructure.”
To learn more about Creatives Empowered, visit creativesempowered.ca/ . CE membership is free for all BIPOC Film, TV and arts professionals emerging or experienced.