Wide Lens is the Canadian Media Producers Association’s equity, diversity and inclusion training platform developed for members.

Wide Lens aims to help producers recognize and eliminate systemic barriers for individuals from Indigenous and equity-deserving communities, and to create new opportunities for engagement, partnership, and collaboration. 

The program also aims to help producers understand the root causes of unconscious bias and systemic racism, develop policies and frameworks to address these issues, and implement best practices in community engagement and authenticity in storytelling.

Individual training sessions offered through the Wide Lens program are developed in partnership with subject-matter experts and community leaders, with deep expertise and understanding of the issues covered.

Throughout the year, the CMPA Wide Lens program will offer CMPA members the opportunity to sign up for training sessions and access supporting resources.

Current programming:

Creating accessibility frameworks for production

Members are invited to register for the CMPA’s upcoming Wide Lens module, focused on helping producers create more accessible and equitable spaces for their partners and team members, offered in partnership with the Disability Screen Office (DSO).

Join us on Wednesday, April 9, 2025, for a workshop about accessibility and disability led by renowned disabled artist and facilitator Ophira Calof. In this session, you’ll learn actionable approaches to align the budgeting, planning, development, and execution of your productions with accessibility. Develop a deeper understanding of accommodation vs. accessibility, how to apply collaboration and communication to better enable access, and learn how to lead by sharing your own access needs to create spaces where all bodies and minds can thrive.

To register for this session, click here to login.

Ophira Calof is a multi-award winning Disabled writer and performer who is drawn to character driven stories that combine humour and heart while subverting narrative tropes and works to “crip the script,” centring disability knowledge and experience. Their recent credits include One More Time (CBC), Rubble and Crew (Treehouse TV), PUSH (CBC), Shelved (CTV), Dino Dex (Amazon Prime), Welcome Series (Titan1Studios), and their solo show Literally Titanium, which has been featured in both academic and performance spaces as a case study in accessible production.

Ophira is currently the co-lead of the Disabled Producers Lab, and has worked as the inaugural creative director for the Accessible Writers’ Lab, the accessibility process lead for AccessCBC, and the curatorial committee lead for the 2022 ReelAbilities Film Festival Toronto. They have taught workshops and provided mentorship internationally on storytelling, accessibility and disability narratives.

Additionally, Ophira has created a number of disability arts projects including the series Making Space: Stories of Disabled Youth Past and Present, and Dis/Play, a public arts project that projected the stories of over 50 Deaf and Disabled creatives onto exterior building walls across Toronto.