News Article

CNA Builds Harmony with MusicNL


11/9/2006 9:19:02 AM


Cyril Organ accepts the Industry Builder Award at MusicNL’s 15th Awards Show in Stephenville. The theme of this year’s conference was Building Harmony.

College of the North Atlantic (CNA) was honoured at MusicNL’s 15th Annual Conference and Awards Show in Stephenville this weekend, with the Industry Builder Award.

Cyril Organ, campus administrator for CNA’s Bay St. George campus, was on hand to accept the award from the Honorable Joan Burke, Minister of Education.

“It is important to acknowledge that the programs [Music Industry and Performance (MIP) and Recording Arts (RA) – both at Bay St. George campus] would not have been here in the first place without the full support of MusicNL. When we first started our inquiries, there was little labour market information and the full economic value of the music sector was relatively unknown,” revealed Organ.

“MusicNL has made enormous strides in validating the sector, and we’ve been fortunate to have their support as we’ve developed our programs. In fact, the name of the MIP program was deliberately selected to highlight the ‘industry’ piece,” he says.

The award is not given out by MusicNL every year, but only when an individual or entity stands out has having made a substantial contribution to the music industry in the province. The Industry Builder award this year, says Janeatt Hogan, president of MusicNL, is very appropriate and well due.

“With everything that CNA has been doing – creating the music programming in the first place and producing the quality of graduates as they do – they deserve this award,” says Hogan.

“The college has been strengthening this growing industry from the ground up for several years now. Graduates have become real industry players – they come out of their programs very prepared. We are proud to share such important work with CNA,” she adds.

Wade Pinhorn is coordinating instructor for the MIP program. He believes the reason CNA received the award is two-fold.

“CNA is being recognized as an educational institution for its support of and belief in education in the music industry… though some may have considered it risky to develop these programs, the college stuck to its mandate to strengthen the infrastructure of the music industry from the grass-roots level up,” says Pinhorn.

“Successful graduates of these programs are beginning to affect the industry, forming strong musical groups, procuring bona fide employment in all areas of the industry, and essentially using the skill set that is taught to them on the ground here out in the real world of the music industry.”

This is a mark of success for the hard work that administrators, instructors, and students have put into these programs, says Pinhorn. In particular, he says it is validation that these areas are real programs of study at the post-secondary level in the province.

Lorne King is campus administrator at Bay St. George campus, and says CNA is proud to be working in partnership with MusicNL.

“Denis Parker has been exemplary as a leader and the board has been consistently supportive,” says King.

“Also, our MIP and RA programs would not exist without the support of the Atlantic Canadian Opportunities Agency and the province. The funding they provided enabled us to start the programs with a good resource base, and we’ve been able to build upon that base since.”

King says part of the programs’ mandate is to impress upon students the importance of belonging to the MusicNL association and the importance of working in the industry.

“It’s through working together that we both get stronger; we all invest in this industry to help it grow. Then everybody benefits.”


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For more information contact:

Roger Hulan
Marketing and Communications Manager
College of the North Atlantic
709. 643.7721

Or

Tanya Alexander
Public Information Officer
College of the North Atlantic
709. 643.7928