Chair's Welcome

Welcome (back) to Image Arts at The Creative School for Winter Semester 2023

As the incoming Interim Chair of the School of Image Arts, I am pleased to welcome you back. Winter 2023 promises to be an exciting term filled with engaging classes and experiential learning activities, as well as community events, exhibitions, screenings, and much more. Our dedicated faculty and staff are here to inspire, guide and support you in your learning. We encourage you to build upon the skills learned in the fall as well as the new and ongoing relationships developed in your classes and labs. Community is not just a word – it is the foundation of our experiences and we urge you to build and nurture it throughout your time here, as the networks you establish now will sustain you for years to come. 

I encourage you to get involved in the extracurricular activities taking place at our school including screenings, lectures and openings, and to share your own work with others in our exhibition spaces; the Image Factory, Gallery 310 and our Vitrines spaces are open to all media. Submit your work  (google form) here (external link) , and be sure to visit our off-site gallery, Artspace (external link)  at 401 Richmond Street West. Check out Function (external link)  Magazine, a visual art and culture publication curated, designed, and produced by a team of 4th-year students focusing on the work of current students, faculty, and industry professionals. Stay tuned for their call for submissions this winter!

As aspiring filmmakers, you will be working toward your premieres at our annual  Image Arts Film Festival (external link)  (IMAFF, formerly RUFF), showcasing the films of graduating students. Since 1998, the student-run festival has provided student filmmakers with a platform to launch their careers in film and connect with leading industry professionals. As media makers in the expanded field you will be working toward showing your lens-based work in Maximum Exposure (external link)  (MaxEx), the annual year-end showcase featuring work from our photography and ID students. A curated selection of photography, installation, moving image and digital art will be presented throughout the Image Arts building, as well as an online exhibition. 

We hope you will take full advantage of your time at our school, recognized nationally and internationally as a centre for creative innovation in the study, production, exhibition, and research of film, photography and digital art. Our BFA programs in Film and Photography are augmented by the cutting edge Integrated Digital option (open to students entering third year) that combines and extends aspects of film and photography, including motion graphics, animation, VR/AR, creative coding, multi-channel video, projection mapping, digital media installations, and 3D modeling. 

Our two graduate programs are highly regarded in Canada and beyond. The MFA in Documentary Media is one of very few such master’s programs in the world connecting traditions to innovative ways of producing documentary work.  The MA in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management (F+PPCM) explores solutions to the challenges that institutions and organizations face in managing and developing object- and digital-based collections. An unparalleled residency program places students in organizations across the world. 

All our carefully designed programs help students develop creative and technical skills, which they can apply in a wide range of media and industries. At the same time, our programs emphasize critical thinking informed by theory and research so that students are attuned to changing organizational and social contexts of contemporary photography and film. 

Our internationally-recognised faculty members challenge and extend definitions around visual and media arts and through their film productions, art exhibitions and scholarly publications. The Image Centre, (external link)  which evolved from the school’s early modest collections, now hosts an exceptional roster of international exhibitions and artist talks, as well as one of the largest photographic archives in Canada, and serves as a premier venue for exceptional student work.

I look forward to meeting you and wish you a very successful and rewarding year.

Katy McCormick, Interim Chair

School of Image Arts

We acknowledge that Toronto is in the 'Dish With One Spoon Territory’. The Dish With One Spoon is a treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee that bound them to share the territory and protect the land. Subsequent Indigenous Nations and peoples, Europeans and all newcomers have been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship and respect.