Jenna's Favourite Creative Industries Courses

One of the things I love about the courses in the Creative Industries (CRI) program is the sheer variety of them. They cover a wide range of topics across all of the creative industries, and allow for students to explore different areas of interest. Since I’m in my fourth year of Creative Industries, and have taken many CRI classes, I wanted to share my favourites!

CRI 400 was one of my favourite mandatory CRI classes. I took it in the winter of my second year, and even though entrepreneurship isn’t a career path I’m really considering, I enjoyed the class and learned skills that I can easily transfer to other opportunities. My favourite part of the class was the guest speakers that my professor brought in every week. They were all entrepreneurs from different parts of the creative industries. We had speakers from the film and music industries, a toy company and even the drag queen, Scarlett Bobo!

Anyone who knows me knows that I love books. So, when I had the chance to take CRI 420 for one of my Table I electives, I took it. I’m thinking about pursuing a career in publishing and found each week’s lessons helpful for learning about different parts of the industry. Our final project for this course was to write and publish an eBook in a group. We wrote an anthology about being a young adult during the pandemic and published it using Kindle Direct Publishing (external link, opens in new window) . Definitely a cool flex to say that I’m a published author!

CRI 530 was one of the classes that captured my interest when I was looking through Creative Industries courses while researching universities. I thought it would be interesting to learn about, and I was right! When I took this course for my Music Industry module, it was co-taught by two industry professionals. One was an actor who taught us about talent management from a film and television perspective, while the other was a current music talent manager. I loved hearing about their real experiences in their industries — it definitely made the class engaging.

I was unsure of what to expect from a class called The Creative Process. It’s another mandatory course for all CRI students. It ended up being interesting to learn about creativity and creative processes through a theoretical lens. This class also had some fun projects that I enjoyed working on. Our major group project was to create a video pitch for an event to be held at Yonge-Dundas Square, which is just steps away from our campus. We also got to meet with marketing professionals from Yonge-Dundas Square, who helped us guide our project.

Okay, this one might be cheating because I haven’t taken it yet, but CRI 860 is one of the courses I’m planning on taking next semester. Event planning was always a field I was interested in exploring, so I’m looking forward to doing so in this class. This course is all about planning and executing an event for our CRI peers and the wider university and Toronto communities. 

When I graduate in the spring I’ll have completed 42 classes, which is hard to believe! I’m happy that I was able to take all of these CRI classes and I recommend that you do too, or find others that better suit your interests. 

Until next time, 

Jenna