Children’s media is a vast, exuberant industry filled with multiple forms of storytelling that have the power to educate, empower, and entertain—something Narmeen Lakhani, a 2018 graduate of our Children’s Media program, has come to know well over the years.
Having launched Birdwings Media earlier this year, a startup that she began conceptualizing in her business class within the program, Narmeen has been creating diverse content for preschool and school-age audiences that parents and educators can use to teach about Muslim contributions to society, in addition to offering consultation and training to youth-related industries on more equitable narrative representation.
“I came into the industry with a profound passion for more inclusive storytelling – to witness characters and voices that better reflected my own cultures and traditions than the negative stereotypes widely propagated by media,” she shares. After recognizing this gap in the North American industry, Narmeen set forth to create Birdwings Media to provide a platform where diverse stories could be better reflected and shared among youth.
From writing her own creative stories at ten years old to now producing creative educational content for youth and leading learning sessions about Muslim representation in children’s media, Narmeen’s academic and professional experiences, tied with the opportunities that Birdwings Media has brought thus far, have allowed her to elevate the content she creates and expand its reach.
Why Children’s Media?
After completing her master’s degree and working in strategic communications for over a decade, Narmeen shares that she had reached a career ceiling in that industry and wanted to revisit her creative roots. “A mentor suggested I take a blank piece of paper and start writing down my earliest memories of being truly happy or excited about something,” she explains. “Out of this exercise emerged images from my childhood—coming home from school to watch educational television, wandering through the public library for hours, and playing digital games when dial-up was all the rage. That's when I discovered children's media as a career option.”
Narmeen’s Journey to Centennial
Motivated by this career prospect, it eventually led Narmeen to pursue Centennial’s Children’s Media program. This one-year Graduate Certificate program explores various areas of the industry and prepares students with the skills and confidence needed to succeed. “I was fortunate to get a lot of positive responses from industry leaders to whom I reached out for guidance, one of which was the Creative Director of TVOKids at the time. She told me about the program at Centennial,” she shares. “Because the program was designed by thought leaders in Toronto, I was also excited for greater access to pick the brains of some very experienced Children's Media professionals.”
Although Narmeen already had an extensive background in media and storytelling, having developed media communications strategies for government and international development organizations to foster social change, often in youth-related sectors like health and education, Narmeen explains she was interested in the program's tangible outcomes for how to create a pitch deck or query a publisher—the specific know-how's that executives look for in creators. While in the program, she says she learned very specific skills, from writing game design documents to what a production pipeline entails. She adds that she also better understood the dynamics of how different aspects of the business work, which has been very useful to her as an entrepreneur in her career today.
“I am a member of the Advisory Committee for the program and have seen it evolve to meet rapid industry changes over the last five years. The Children's Media program covers a lot in one year, so it's meant to be an introduction to many broad areas with endless scope for further exploration,” she shares.
"Students come into it with such different prior experiences, and how they choose to combine their existing strengths with new learnings, or whether they go on to dig deeper into a particular discipline, is very self-driven, I would say. You might enrol expecting to land a job as a Production Assistant or Script Coordinator but suddenly discover a new passion for puppetry or voice acting, which takes you in a new direction after graduation."
Advice to Current Students and Recent Graduates
Narmeen shares how an entrepreneurial spirit can help students make the most of the Children's Media program and explains that it's not necessarily about starting your own business. Still, it is important to be motivated to create your own opportunities in an incredibly competitive space like Children's Media.
She adds, “The program offers a starting point to key areas of the industry, but you have to take initiative to delve meaningfully into the topics that interest you most and go beyond the course offerings to understand how to stay current, innovate, and think at a global scale. The democratization of media is allowing content creators more direct access to audiences than ever before, but this also requires ingenuity and tenacity to learn how to achieve your goals with limited resources or distinguish your work from the massive volume of content that exists out there for children.”
Birdwings Media
Narmeen’s storytelling startup, Birdwings Media, can be categorized into two main areas:
- Creating diverse content for parents and educators on Muslim contributions to society
- Offering consultation and training to youth-related industries on more equitable narrative representation
Exploring the content creation side of things, Narmeen began her journey travelling across Pakistan this year, the world's second-largest Muslim country (by population), to create content she could share with her audience. "I was fortunate to able to capture the breadth of music, art, food, culture and stories that each region has to offer," she explains.
You can view Narmeen’s video content on her Instagram @birdwings.media
When Narmeen first launched her startup, there were some elements she didn't expect, along with elements she really enjoyed. She shares, "At the early stages of a startup, you have to be very lean with your resources, so where in the past I've overseen maybe one aspect of production, this time I was juggling numerous tasks by myself, from travel logistics and research to filming, editing, social media marketing, web design, and distribution. I had to give myself some grace to allow a learning curve for areas of work that were less familiar and enjoy the process of experimentation rather than putting unrealistic expectations on myself."
She continues, “I was also travelling to new areas of a different country and trying to experience firsthand narratives at a grassroots level, which requires building trust and relationships with the local communities I met. It has been a challenging journey so far but undeniably rewarding. The process of unlearning my own biases and finding the personal courage to interact meaningfully with people from diverse walks of life was certainly an important part of building the foundation for an inclusive storytelling startup.
The Future of Storytelling
“I hope to see more inclusive stories, of course, and that is happening slowly as the industry creates more space for diverse storytellers,” Narmeen shares. “One of the points I really try to emphasize in the learning sessions I offer is that we need to think beyond just visual representation and take a narrative-first approach when incorporating traditionally underrepresented characters. It's not just about whether a character wears a hijab or not – what is it about their storyline that celebrates their Muslim heritage? There is a fine balance between not wanting to 'other' diverse characters and finding opportunities to educate audiences about new cultures and traditions.”To hear more about Birdwings Media and Narmeen’s journey launching her startup, head over to our podcast, Storyteller In-Depth, to listen to our episode with Narmeen: Birdwings Media with Narmeen Lakhani.
Article by: Alexandra Few
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