Brock 2.0

The founders of FourGrounds Media are examples of Niagara’s new entrepreneurs of interactive media.

If Mike Gillespie, Adrian Thiessen and Kristin Nater had wanted jobs in their fields five years ago, they would have had no choice but to be on the first bus out of Niagara.

Interactive media jobs for students with Film Studies degrees were scarce in Niagara, which has for generations had an economy rooted in manufacturing.

The trio is trained in the theoretical and technical side of film and video. Jobs using that knowledge have traditionally been in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, says Nater (BA ’07), who is currently earning a master’s in Film Studies and Popular Culture at Brock.

But that was before.

Last year, they founded FourGrounds Media, which does web video marketing, videography and film production from its headquarters in downtown St. Catharines. Their work has appeared on Silver City screens in Halton through their narrative ads for the Region’s Clean Air Policy Campaign. They also produced a series of fire prevention videos for the Ontario Municipal Fire Prevention Officers’ Association, Niagara division. It is the first campaign of its kind aimed at post-secondary students.

The company’s success has been possible, they say, because of efforts to grow an interactive and new media sector in Niagara.

“It’s been a matter of being in the right place at the right time with the right people,” says Gillespie, a Brock student. “There’s the potential for any area to do what Niagara is doing, but the Niagara region has specifically made a conscious effort to shift and gear toward this type of industry.”

Brock has been at the forefront of that shift. In 2008, it helped form nGen, an interactive media business incubator with four flourishing tenants in its location at One St. Paul St. The incubator is a partnership between Brock, Interactive Ontario, the Niagara Economic Development Corporation, Niagara College, the City of St. Catharines, the Niagara Enterprise Agency and Silicon Knights, a St. Catharines game design company founded by Denis Dyack (BPhEd ’90, BSc ‘90).

The incubator provides office space, guidance and support to four companies who network with each other daily. FourGrounds is an inaugural nGen company, as is Furi Enterprises, a technology consulting company run by current Brock student Thomas Madej. Other tenants are Morro Images and Dragon Chess, which has John Bachynski (BA ’03) and Andrew Cheeseman at the helm...