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Artist and Emily Carr University animation student Lia Fabre-Dimsdale has landed an internship with Vancouver-based company .

The internship, which was made available through the , will see Lia working on the award-winning animated PBS Kids series, .

Now between her second and third years in ȫ���Ʊ’s animation program, Lia says the internship “came out of the blue.”

“I’m really surprised with the opportunity,” she says. “It’s really exciting. I’ve been a grip on some local productions before, but that’s about it, really, in terms of working in the entertainment industry. This will be my first opportunity.”

Leslie Bishko, associate professor of 2D + Experimental Animation, helped connect Lia with Mitacs, the not-for-profit research and training organization whose BSI program sponsored Lia’s internship. Leslie will also act as Lia’s internship supervisor. She says Lia will have the chance to work in a number of different roles on the show, meaning she’ll enter her third year at ȫ���Ʊ in September with a wealth of new skills at her disposal.

“Atomic is going to set her up so she spends a little bit of time in each area of production,” Leslie says, noting Lia will try design, storyboards, animation and FX. “It’s going to accelerate her learning in a big way. I think this is going to allow her to really get to that place where she can have a vision that’s exciting for her and feel she’s got the means to create it.”

Lia’s internship with Atomic is the first time an animation studio has partnered with Mitacs.

Lia, who is a part of Liidlii Kue First Nation, grew up in Fort Simpson, NWT, a “tiny little town” on a sandbar island sitting right where the Mackenzie River and Liard River meet. Though she attended most of her first year at Emily Carr in person, the pandemic saw her continue her second-year studies remotely, from her current home in Whitehorse, YT.

Having spent some time away from her childhood home, Lia says she’s begun turning her gaze back to that time as a source of inspiration for her art practice.

“I’ve definitely been finding that I’ve been drawing on a lot of memories of things that seem iconic from growing up there,” she says. “I’ve been finding a lot of interest in that, especially in translating that into animation. It’s been a cool process.”

But Lia’s artistic exploration of her lived experience has been developing for years. In , Lia talked about the comic book covers she produced over three weeks as an artist-in-residence at the in the Yukon. The images reference the iconic twentieth-century books Lia’s European maternal grandmother used to send her from overseas.

“I came up with these comic book cover pieces … inspired by these classic French comics like The Adventures of Tintin, and Asterix and all that, and reimagining them with First Nations women as the main characters,” she told CBC at the time. “It’s kind of exploring the idea of normalizing diversity in classic forms of pop culture. Specifically, thinking about North America.”

Addressing the systemic and historical underrepresentation of Indigenous voices and characters in mainstream storytelling remains as important as ever, Lia notes. But focusing on the way Indigenous people are represented is equally important.

“Even just in the past two years, I’ve seen a little bit of Indigenous representation, but really not much,” she tells me. “And a lot of times, that representation involves some kind of trauma or something related to residential schools, which, of course, is important to talk about. But it would also be a relief to see people I can relate to — who look like me — living their normal, daily lives.”

In all kinds of entertainment media, white characters are commonplace. They’re heroes, villains, and an infinite variety of