September was a busy month for the CPD, and it feels like an important moment to reflect on how much our community is beginning to grow — both across Canada and through stronger connections with production designers internationally.
Earlier this month, we co-hosted the Production Designers Breakfast during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) with the Production Designers Collective, bringing together Canadian and international production designers for a morning of conversation and connection. Opportunities like this are important. Production design can be an unusually isolated role, and there is tremendous value in creating spaces where designers can meet one another, compare experiences, share ideas, and build relationships outside the pressures of production.
One of the key conversations at the breakfast was around recognition for production designers within the festival world. Production designers play a central creative role in shaping the visual language of a film, yet their inclusion at festivals can be inconsistent. We discussed the importance of production designers being recognized alongside other key creative collaborators through festival accreditation, invitations and tickets, industry events and parties, red carpets, and inclusion in festival programs and conversations about the films they helped create.
This is about more than access to events. Production design is a major creative contribution to filmmaking, and the people responsible for creating the physical and visual worlds audiences see on screen should be part of the public conversation around that work. The CPD continues to work with the Production Designers Collective and other organizations internationally to encourage greater recognition of the profession.
TIFF also brought important conversations about artificial intelligence and the rapidly changing technologies affecting film and television. This area continues to evolve quickly, and many questions remain about how these tools are affecting creative work, authorship, employment, copyright, and the way our departments operate. We are paying close attention to those conversations and to what emerging technologies may mean specifically for production designers, set decorators, and art departments. As the landscape becomes clearer, this is an area where we expect to become increasingly engaged alongside the unions, guilds, associations, and other organizations already working on these issues.
Another major focus this year has been improving how the CPD connects with our community. This month, we officially launched our website, creating a stronger home for our programs, events, sustainability work, resources, industry news, membership, and the work of Canadian production designers and art departments. Our goal is not simply to have a better website, but to build something genuinely useful — a place where people working in our departments can find information, discover opportunities, learn from one another, and see more of the work happening across the country. We will continue to add new features and resources as we go.
That national reach remains one of our biggest priorities. The CPD was created as a national organization, and we want our leadership and programming to reflect the many production communities working across Canada. We are currently looking for a BC Regional Representative who can help strengthen our connection with production design professionals in British Columbia, bring regional perspectives into our conversations, and help us better understand where the CPD can be useful locally. As we continue to grow, we want more voices from different regions involved in shaping that growth.
We have also continued working to make our sustainability resources more accessible nationally. Following the launch of the English CPD Sustainability Playbook this spring, we have now released the French edition. Creating resources in both official languages is an important part of our commitment to serving production design communities across Canada as we move forward.
Next month, we will be taking some of this work beyond Canada when the CPD returns to the Production Designers Gathering in Greece. We will be presenting the results of our Circular Production Design-Build Workshop and sharing what we learned through the pilot with production designers from around the world.
As the CPD grows, our goal is to keep building those connections in both directions: between regions within Canada, between different parts of our own art departments, and between Canadian production designers and the wider international community. There is an enormous amount we can learn from one another, and there is also a great deal Canadian production designers can contribute to those conversations.
Thank you to everyone who joined us during TIFF, has participated in our programs, shared ideas, or helped us continue building the CPD.
Rose Lagacé
President | Canadian Production Design Association
