Ingaged Creative Productions: Growing Through Creativity, Connection, and Community

An Indigenous-owned company bringing creative services and event production together, while building opportunities for clients, artists, and a growing team.

A conference begins long before anyone steps onto a stage. It needs a purpose, an identity, communications that reach the right people, and a plan for bringing them together. When the doors open, the design, technology, and logistics must all work hand in hand to create a seamless experience. 

Ingaged Creative Productions has grown by connecting those pieces. 

Founded in 2019, Ingaged Creative Productions has a head office in Fort William First Nation, and operates in neighbouring Thunder Bay, Ontario. They have developed into an integrated creative and event production company with 27 team members, supporting more than 100 events each year. Its capabilities span design, website development, marketing, communications, audiovisual production, print, custom products and event management. 

Across that work, their approach is consistent: understand what clients are trying to accomplish, bring the right people and resources together, and build relationships that continue beyond delivery. 

Services That Grow Together

Services That Grow Together

Ingaged’s expansion has come through developing complementary services. Creative work informs event production; events create opportunities for print, multimedia communications, and web development; artist partnerships bring original work into projects across the company. 

For a client, that can mean working with one team from the initial concept through branding, registration, participant communications, printed materials and technical delivery. The same creative direction can carry through an invitation, ongoing communication, a stage screen, and a delegate’s take-home materials. 

This integration gives clients a connected approach to projects with many moving parts. It also allows Ingaged’s departments to contribute earlier in the planning process, bringing practical production knowledge into creative decisions and keeping the audience’s experience in view. 

The company supports live, virtual and hybrid events, alongside standalone creative and communications projects. Its work has taken the team all across Northwestern Ontario and into other parts of the province, extending its reach while maintaining its home base in Fort William First Nation. 

Investing in Capacity and People

Investing in Capacity and People

Growing an integrated company requires investment across several disciplines. Ingaged has established dedicated teams in design, event services, audiovisual services, and print and production, supported by department leads and shared project management processes. 

Investments in equipment, transportation and production capabilities have helped the company take on more complex work. Alongside those investments, Ingaged has developed the people who deliver it. 

Many employees joined without previous industry experience and built their skills through practical work, training and collaboration. Some who joined in entry-level roles now lead departments, helping newer team members develop their own expertise. 

That development matters in a business where delivery depends on people understanding each other’s work. Designers, communications staff, technicians, and event coordinators bring different areas of expertise to the same project. As the company grows, their ability to plan and solve problems together becomes an increasingly valuable part of its service. 

“A conference begins long before anyone steps onto a stage.”

Indigenous Partnerships Within the Business Model

Indigenous Partnerships in the Business

Ingaged’s Indigenous ownership shapes how it works and where it invests. Anishinaabe values of reciprocity, storytelling and lasting relationships inform its approach to clients, colleagues and collaborators. 

The Ingaged Creative Marketplace makes those commitments tangible. Through partnerships with 12 Indigenous Artists, the company develops products featuring licensed artwork, with royalties paid to the artists on sales. 

Those relationships also extend into client work. Licensed artwork can appear in conference identities, annual reports, signage, custom gifts and stage displays, creating further opportunities for artists to earn from their work and reach new audiences. 

Ingaged also works with Indigenous entrepreneurs, performers, translators, crafters, and Knowledge and Language Keepers. These collaborations bring expertise and cultural understanding into projects while directing business opportunities toward the people and communities contributing to them. 

Supporting Indigenous creativity is part of Ingaged’s everyday operations, embedded in how they develop products, assemble project teams and deliver services. 

A Place for the Next Stage of Growth

A Venue for Future Growth

Ingaged’s investment in The Outset, its events venue, adds a physical home for gathering to its wider production capabilities.

Ingaged purchased and renovated a historic community hall in Thunder Bay’s Simpson Street neighbourhood. Built in 1890, it had served the community for generations before falling into disrepair. 

Ingaged transformed it into The Outset. That transformation continues the building’s tradition as a gathering place while bringing Ingaged’s creative, technical, and event services together in a venue of their own. 

Its work also includes supporting gatherings with significance well beyond their production requirements. Ingaged has co-delivered the Neeganii-Iishawin Gathering, one of the largest annual Indigenous gatherings in the region, and supported the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association Gathering, where residential school Survivors and their families come together. Such relationships depend on care, cultural awareness and trust earned over time. 

For Ingaged, the next stage of growth builds on the connections already at the heart of the company: between creative disciplines, between clients and audiences, and between commercial activity and community opportunity. 

As its capabilities expand, so does their ability to bring those connections to life. 

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Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available information intended only for informational purposes. CanadianSME Small Business Magazine does not endorse or guarantee any products or services mentioned. Readers are advised to conduct their research and due diligence before making business decisions.