Because today, every art student needs to minor as a content creator

If you go on the OCADU Live website, you'll find an absolute cavalcade of seemingly unrelated content: an interview with legendary photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, nerd culture critiques, make-up techniques, cartoons. Maybe, if you squint, there's a broad "art-and-culture" theme to the content, but then again, there's also a show that's just people being stoked about paintball.

OCADU Live — which the the Ontario College of Art and Design University bills as a student run, on-demand streaming service — started in 2020, as a way for the school to engage with students during the pandemic. The format is open, with everything from short films to game shows and chat shows. The project also pays students for their time and allows them to keep their IP. The initial funding came from a grant from the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. Beyond just being a fun, weird time, OCADU Live has another purpose: to get OCADU students to become content creators. Because the uncomfortable fact is, if you want to make a living in a creative industry in 2024, you have to be in the content creation business to one extent or another.

"If you make anything at all these days, not only do you have to know how to make it, but you also have to be able to explain to people how you make it, as a way to kind of increase your, the attention that you and your art practice can get," says Ontario College of Art and Design University President Ana Serrano.

The goal is to help OCADU students learn how to find and build an audience for their work.

"We said 'OK, let's provide the opportunity for students to pitch stories that they really want to tell," she says. "It could be a 10-minute show, it could be a one-hour-long show, or a single episode or a series, and we will pay them to do this. It will be student-driven from the ground up. We'll have an adjudication committee, choosing these shows, made up of students."

Leonardo Dell'Anno says that initially, many students didn't want to see themselves as content creators.

"We definitely had people be like 'Oh, I'm not a content creator, I'm an artist," he says.

A veteran filmmaker, Dell'Anno was the person OCADU tapped to oversee OCADU Live. He says that many students were uncomfortable with the idea of content creation. He adds that, while some students saw content creation as antithetical to art, others were already doing it. They just weren't sure about doing it with him.

He points to the sardonic OCADU-related meme page Brocad. Just before the pandemic, the Brocad Instagram page had a following that was equal to about half of OCADU's student body. For Dell'Anno, they seemed like a natural fit. They weren't as easily sold, to the point where the crew running the then-anonymous account were nervous about revealing their identities.

"They thought they were in trouble," he says. "We were [only] able to contact them in their DMs, and they were just so scared of the partnership... And we were like, 'No, we want to give you a platform, but you have to share who you are.' And you see them go from that to interviewing one of the most influential people in the [art] world, Wolfgang Tillmans, on their podcast last year."

OCADU Live also functions as a production house, creating content for various Toronto businesses. This gives students and recent grads another opportunity to earn income, as well as helping to fund the streaming service. They were also the only student media outlet to get a red carpet accreditation for last year's Toronto International Film Festival. 

Fourth-year creative writing major Chris Markland is one of OCADU Live's success stories. He started seriously working on content creation through the program and now has almost 242,000 followers on his own TikTok, which is a mixture of comic book culture critique and his own comic book work. He's also used that platform to crowdfund his first short film.

He says that when he first started making content with OCADU Live, he felt like he was stuck in a bit of a creative rut.

"I was just spending all my time, when the pandemic first started, alone in my room drawing and writing all day," he says. "Eventually I feel like I just kind of hit a wall creatively. I was doing all this work, but I wasn't seeing the fruits of my labour."

He says that now that he has an audience — as well as some money from the project — he feels more creatively focused and able to pursue his goals.

"I can invest more of my time in it," he says. "Because I know that it's building toward something. It's not just going to be me on a soapbox, talking in front of nobody."

Ultimately, Dell'Anno says that, by embracing content creation, this crop of OCADU students has opportunities that were unimaginable even 15 years ago.

"What we're able to do now is, just in minutes, build an audience," he says.