After landing a new CEO in the summer of 2015, Creative BC is continuing to reconfigure the leadership of the organization charged with promoting the province’s creative sectors.
Gordon Esau, a partner at Dentons Canada LLP, is transitioning from a Creative BC board member to the board chairman.
“It’s an interesting crossroad to take on that position,” he told Business in Vancouver.
“The importance and value of the creative industries is growing. The industries are taken much more seriously now than they were a number of years ago.”
Creative BC is responsible for promoting the province’s film and TV sectors and administering tax subsidies for productions.
Those responsibilities previously fell to the B.C. Film Commission until that branch of the provincial government was merged with B.C. Film and Media in 2013 to form Creative BC.
Esau said the new leadership team going forward will be focused on broadening the scope of the organization, which also carries a mandate to promote music, magazine and book publishing industries.
The non-profit agency is in the midst of working with experts at the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business to develop its new strategic plan, according to Esau.
He said new CEO Prem Gill would be overseeing the details of the strategic plan but Creative BC has a broad strategy already in place.
“Film and TV are robust…and we want to make sure we don’t disturb that and encourage that high level of activity,” Esau said.
“It will be interesting to see areas where we can draw on that strength to the benefit of other creative industries in the province generally. And we’re just getting our arms around how we can assist book publishing and music.”
Creative BC has been working with representatives from the music, magazine and book publishing industries in focus groups to get a handle on the needs of those sectors.
Meanwhile, the agency has also added new board members from those sectors including Watchdog Management general manager Sarah Fenton and Tom Gierasimczuk, publisher and general manager of Vancouver Magazine and Western Living.
Other additions announced January 27 include Force Four Entertainment president Robert Bromley taking on the role of vice-chairman. Okanagan International Animation Festival executive director Anne Denman was also named a board member along with and Zynga vice-president Pauline Moller.
