Inuit Broadcasting Corp. project nets KIA support

Estimated to cost more than $10 million, the new media arts centre, spearheaded by the Inuit Broadcasting Corp., would provide Nunavut’s first full-scale, state-of-the-art, digital recording and production facilities. (FILE PHOTO)

The Inuit Broadcasting Corp. is one step closer to realizing its media arts centre, thanks to a $200,000 donation from the Kivalliq Inuit Association.

The KIA joins the territory’s two other Inuit organizations, the Kitikmeot Inuit Association and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, in supporting the construction of the Nunavut Media Arts Centre, set to open in Iqaluit in 2013.

“KIA has always supported Inuit broadcasting, and IBC is an important part of today’s Inuit culture right across the territory,” said the KIA treasurer Donna Adams. “We’re proud to join the Qikiqtani and the Kitikmeot Inuit Associations in supporting this exciting media arts centre project. It’s clear that Inuit everywhere in Nunavut want this to happen.”

The Kivalliq region has always played a role in the territory’s broadcasting history, said a Nov. 17 press release, which mentioned stars like the Inuit super-hero Super Shamou and broadasters Martin Kreelak, Jose Kusugak and Nunavut minister Lorne Kusugak, one of IBC’s founding directors.

As the next step, the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation plans to launch a fundraising campaign, while it waits to learn how much money the federal and territorial governments are ready to contribute towards the project.

The $10-million Nunavut Media Arts Centre is intended to be Nunavut’s first digital audio, video, recording, performance and post production facility.

The centre’s proposed 8,000-square-foot building on Federal Road in Iqaluit will house the Inuit Film and Video Archive, a facility where all the old tapes from IBC can be preserved, catalogued, digitized and stored safely.

It will also provide office space and post-production facilities for IBC’s subsidiary, Inuit Communications Systems Ltd., which does contract work with government agencies, businesses, designated Inuit organizations, community organizations, social service agencies, and other non-profit groups and private broadcasters from across Nunavut and the rest of Canada.

The IBC says the new centre should attract local and territorial freelancers, production companies and broadcasters to work in Nunavut.