Experience behind Brendonhill
The Legacy Awards
Build the platform.
From an idea for a televised awards show to a national platform built around Black achievement, industry access and cultural visibility.
The context
What was being built.
The Legacy Awards began with a visible goal: create a major nationally televised awards show celebrating Black Canadian talent. The broadcast could not exist in isolation. The organization, partnerships, funding, workforce initiatives, audience touchpoints and operating structure around it had to be built at the same time.
The work was being built in real time: first-of-its-kind expectations, evolving budgets, broadcaster requirements, sponsorship needs, talent and venue complexity, COVID-era uncertainty and a new organization that still needed systems around it.
If the Awards were going to matter beyond one night, the platform behind the broadcast needed to be as intentional as the show itself—repeatable structures around funding, partnerships, community participation, recognition and workforce development.
Where responsibility sat
What I moved.
- 01
Led platform-side operations and major initiatives through The Black Academy, with founder approval and oversight.
- 02
Built sponsorship, partner and institutional-funding relationships.
- 03
Developed operating structures around voting, media, events, community touchpoints and year-round initiatives.
- 04
Helped create, administer and oversee the Skills Development Program as a paid pathway into the screen industry.
- 05
Oversaw Bay Mills Studios’ production participation and coordinated with CBC and Insight Productions, the lead production partner.
Project-specific evidence
Proof close to the claim.
Metrics remain tied to their reporting period, source project and collaborators.
Beyond the deliverable
The platform created relationships that extended beyond a single edition, helped establish the Skills Development Program and created the conditions to evolve the Legacy IP into Legacy Lounge when the economics of the awards format changed.
Build the operating system around the idea—not only the thing audiences see.
Accuracy makes the work stronger
Credit and publication note.
The Legacy Awards was a partnership between CBC, Insight Productions, The Black Academy and Bay Mills Studios. Media-campaign metrics are reported by Free Publicity / Meltwater for the 2024 campaign.
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