Ann Meekitjuk Hanson links up with Nunavut Media Arts Centre project

The future Nunavut Media Arts Centre has new supporter: Ann Meekitjuk Hanson, a broadcaster and former Commissioner of Nunavut, who has joined the planning team for the $10-million centre in Iqaluit.

The Inuit Broadcasting Corp., the centre’s main promoter, wants to see the centre, at 870 Federal Rd., finished by the summer of 2013.

The proposed 8,000-square-foot building will be a state-of-the-art digital facility for audio, video, recording, performance and post-production.

The centre will also house an Inuit Film and Video Archive, a facility where old tapes from IBC can be preserved, catalogued, digitized and stored safely.

It will provide office space and post-production facilities for IBC’s subsidiary, Inuit Communications Systems Ltd., which does contract work with government agencies, businesses, non-profit groups and private broadcasters.

The centre will also be available for use by local and territorial freelancers, performers, artists and independent production companies.

“There is absolutely no argument. We need a real Nunavut Media Arts Centre,” Hanson said in an April 27 news release from IBC. “It is ludicrous we are expected to produce high quality Inuktitut programming in run-down old buildings, buildings that go back to the Second World War, previously owned by American military.”