A Creative Hub for the Entire Community

Imagine a vibrant and interconnected creative hub that attracts extraordinary talent from around the world; nurtures our own artists and creative entrepreneurs; and inspires our community with myriad opportunities to learn, collaborate and share our stories.

Wilfrid Laurier University’s Brantford campus is developing plans to build a creativity hub, an inclusive community space that will encourage collaboration, creation and presentation of digital stories.

This multidisciplinary facility will be complete with creative studios, labs, workshop spaces, offices, an incubator and a commons area. The creativity hub will support development of the business, technology and entrepreneurial skills required to work and thrive in today’s environment of current and emerging digital media.

The creativity hub will offer public memberships to creative industry professionals, non-profits and artists. Community members will have an opportunity to operate their businesses and develop projects in conjunction with, and support of, student learning, faculty research and community involvement. The creativity hub will also offer a suite of programs, including certificate courses, workshops and events.

Impact

As a community-focused initiative, this project strengthens the regional cultural sector through a revolutionary new model of cross-sector collaboration between local communities of creators, businesses, non-profits and postsecondary institutions. The creativity hub will offer:

• Experiential learning and skills development for community members and students by having an opportunity to collaborate and work with creative professionals.
• Support and professional development for local arts entrepreneurs and cultural innovators.
• Cross-sector collaborations between the local community, creative businesses and academia.
• Local economic development by attracting and supporting new companies operating locally within the creative economy.
• Retention of recent postsecondary graduates through incubation of new ventures.
• A regional arts and culture resource for Brantford, Brant, Six Nations, Mississaugas of the Credit, Norfolk and Haldimand.

The creativity hub will be a place for:

• animation
• AR/VR/MR development
• audio arts
• broadcasting
• cinematography
• creative writing
• digital media engineering and editing
• game development
• graphic arts
• motion capture and VFX
• photography
• podcasting
• storytelling
• videography

The Spaces

The proposed creativity hub will be located in the downtown of Brantford within Laurier’s One Market building (formerly Market Square) and operated by Laurier. The types of spaces that make up the creativity hub include:

• augmented and virtual reality lab
• bookable meeting spaces
• broadcast studio
• film and TV set
• green screen studio
• incubator
• Mac lab
• partner offices
• photography studio
• podcast studio
• public collaboration and exhibit space
• sound studio