“Find your own unique creative voice and the rest will follow.”

Amy grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and lived in central New York, San Francisco, Boston and Toronto before moving to Nelson in 2006.

Many mentors helped Amy to where she is today as she studied at Colgate University to earn a degree in English and education. She achieved her master’s degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education and her Advanced Diploma for Independent Digital Film Program from Selkirk College.

Amy’s full service video production company Watershed Productions Inc. allows her to ground her classes in current professional practices. She was Nelson’s Cultural Ambassador in 2014 and has won numerous film festivals awards. Since 2007, she’s partnered with Selkirk College to run summer film camp with hundreds of children learning filmmaking.

Amy is always eager to find new avenues of filmmaking to pursue and absolutely loves Kootenay life.

“You can have your cake and eat it too.”

Charla is a true local – born and raised in Ymir, BC.

She received her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of British Columbia (UBC), where she later worked as a research scientist for five years. In 1996, she received her Bachelor of Education degree, also from UBC, through the West Kootenay Teacher Education Program.

Charla has been teaching web development, digital arts and computer programming since 1997 and joined the School of the Arts Digital Arts faculty in 2004. During her teaching career, she has developed over 20 online and blended delivery courses both at the high school and college levels. Since the mid 90s, she worked as a contract web designer and has done many volunteer web development projects for non-profit organizations.

Born and raised on a sheep and cattle farm in rural Australia, Marian was drawn to the Kootenays over ten years ago by a love of mountains and nature. In the decade before putting down roots in Canada, she travelled the world extensively, favouring an unplanned approach with an open ticket. In between, she studied visual communications at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, where she gained an appreciation for typography and design.

Since then, Marian has accumulated over 15 years of industry experience designing strategically for both print and web. Early in her career Marian worked in editorial design with De Luxe & Associates, working on projects such as the redesign of the South China Morning Post and Asia Money magazine. From 2011-2017 Marian was responsible for clarifying, developing and implementing Selkirk College design brand standards. A multidisciplinary approach continues to be applied in Marian’s design practice where understanding content, people and context is key in developing relevant and inspiring visual communications.

Marian’s passion and skill in typography and information design has been shared in her teaching career beginning at the University of Technology Sydney Australia where Marian tutored foundational typography and magazine design in studio classes. Marian continues teaching typography and graphic design communications at School of the Arts in the Digital Arts Program in Nelson.