THE STORY LAB
The StoryLab
The Story Lab is an 8-week narrative incubator for writers from Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and their diasporas. Based in Canada. Grounded in African cinematic craft. Applied globally. We do not teach formula. We teach discipline; the structural rigor that makes a specific story travel
THE PROGRAM
Eight weeks. One story. A new craft.
The Story Lab is an 8-week narrative incubator for writers from Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and their diasporas. Based in Canada. Grounded in African cinematic craft. Applied globally. We do not teach formula. We teach discipline; the structural rigor that makes a specific story travel.
Weeks
Intensive program
WRITERS
Per cohort
PHASES
Curriculum phases
Goal
A story that travels
THE PROGRAM
Apply for the next cohort.
COHORT 1
Applications open: January 2027
Deadline: April 30, 2027
COHORT 2
Applications open: July 2027
Deadline: October 31, 2027
THE CURRICULUM
Seven phases. One transformation.
01. THE NARRATIVE ENGINE
Learn to identify and build the dramatic engine that drives your story. Structure is not optional — but it is learnable.
02. THE BRIDGE
Bridge engineered between cultural specificity and global audience. Your story does not need to be flattened. It needs to be tuned.
03. MENTORSHIP
One-on-one mentorship with experienced writers and development professionals who understand both your cultural context and the production marketplace.
04. THE NARRATIVE ENGINE
Engineered challenges designed to expose structural weaknesses and force solutions under pressure. Each is timed, reviewed, and builds a specific professional capability.
- Antagonist Inversion — Your antagonist is now the protagonist. Do they have sufficient dramatic force to carry a story?
- Compression — Reduce a feature screenplay to a 10-minute one-act. What survives the cut? What is essential?
- Engine Swap — Remove the protagonist’s stated motivation. Can the story still generate drama through action and conflict?
- Cultural Pressure Test — Explain your cultural foundation to someone from a completely different background. Fix the transmission.
05. WRITERS’ ROOM
Simulate the professional writers room environment. Learn to pitch, defend, revise, and collaborate under deadline.
06. TABLE READ
Hear your work performed by professional actors. Discover what lives on the page and what dies there.
07. PITCH FINALE
Every fellow delivers a professional pitch to a panel of industry professionals. This is not a presentation. This is an audition.
ELIGIBILITY
Who should apply
African Writers
You have completed a first draft rooted in a specific African context — Nigerian, Kenyan, Ghanaian, South African, Ethiopian, or any other national or regional tradition. The material is rich, but the structure will not hold. You need mechanics to amplify your cultural engine, not replace it.
Indigenous Writers
You are writing from Indigenous knowledge systems and storytelling traditions — reclaiming narrative authority, language, and cultural memory. You need dramatic infrastructure that carries cultural specificity with power and precision, not translation or compromise.
Canadian Writers
You are writing from communities underserved by Canadian funding and development institutions — racialized Canadians, immigrants to Canada, Indigenous peoples, writers from smaller Canadian cities outside the Toronto/Vancouver corridor. You need professional-grade development access that Canadian industry structures have not provided.
Canadian Emerging Writers
You are an emerging Canadian writer early in your career, looking to develop your craft with rigorous professional training. Whether you are a recent graduate, a career-changer, or a writer who has been working independently without institutional support — the Story Lab provides the structured development environment you need to advance.
Refugee & Immigrant Writers
Your experience of displacement is the engine of your work. You write from inside the rupture of migration — the loss, the transformation, the relentless negotiation between where you came from and where you are now. You need to translate experiential complexity into dramatic structure that resonates universally.
Caribbean Writers
You write from a Caribbean context — island-born, diaspora-raised, or both. Your work moves between oral tradition and literary form, between patois and standard English, between ancestral memory and contemporary reality. You need to make your multiplicity a dramatic asset rather than a source of confusion.
South Asian Writers
You operate between South Asian production contexts and the North American market. You understand both worlds but have not yet found the structural bridge. You need tools that work across both contexts — that honour your origins while meeting international production standards.
Latin American Writers
You operate between Latin American production contexts and the North American market. You understand both worlds but have not yet found the structural bridge. You need tools that work across both contexts — that honour your origins while meeting international production standards.
WHAT YOU GET
Leave with more than a script.
A Professional-Grade Script
A rewritten, stress-tested, professional-grade script that is a fundamentally different object than what you submitted. Stronger structure, clearer engine, working dramaturgy.
Detailed Structural Notes
Detailed structural notes from development professionals documenting what was identified, what was addressed, and what remains — your development roadmap.
Alumni Network
Lab alumni join a permanent professional network of writers, mentors, and industry contacts across Canada and internationally. Alumni receive priority access to future Lab resources, ongoing peer connections, first notification of Slate opportunities, and invitations to Toronto-based industry events.
Slate Pathway
Projects meeting our quality threshold are considered for the BPS Slate — direct presentation to Canadian and international production partners, broadcasters, and streaming platforms. The Slate pathway is earned through demonstrated work quality, not automatic. The best pitches from each cohort are nominated for Slate presentation.
PHILOSOPHY
We do not grade you. We test you. Every exercise, every mentorship session, every peer session simulates the professional conditions you will face in a real writers’ room, a real development meeting, a real pitch. Classrooms produce students. Accelerators produce professionals.
Each component simulates professional conditions. The Lab prepares you for the industry, not the classroom.
Ideas are cheap. Execution is expensive. The mechanics of drama — structure, tension, causality, escalation — are not mystical. They are learnable. They are engineerable. We teach you to build the machine that generates drama. Once you understand the mechanics, you can apply them to any story, any culture, any context.
FUNDING MODEL
Charging fellows creates a barrier that excludes exactly the writers we exist to serve. Free does not mean low-quality. It means funded. A refugee writer rebuilding their life in Canada should not have to fund their own training. An Indigenous writer reclaiming narrative sovereignty deserves institutional support, not personal debt. We built the funding model to remove barriers, not create them.
Contributions from individuals and family foundations committed to developing narrative talent from underserved communities.
Development partnerships with Canadian and international production companies, plus streamers with diversity and inclusion mandates.
Each component simulates professional conditions. The Lab prepares you for the industry, not the classroom.
Ideas are cheap. Execution is expensive. The mechanics of drama — structure, tension, causality, escalation — are not mystical. They are learnable. They are engineerable. We teach you to build the machine that generates drama. Once you understand the mechanics, you can apply them to any story, any culture, any context.
FAQ
Questions? Answered.
Not at all. We work with any writer who has a story that involves African perspectives, settings, or themes. We’re also open to writers from the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, and Indigenous communities.
The Story Lab is free for accepted fellows. We are funded by partners who believe that removing financial barriers creates better stories.
A writing sample (10 pages minimum), a statement of intent (500 words maximum: your writing background, your community and cultural context, any relevant experience, and why you are applying to this specific Lab at this specific moment), and a brief statement confirming your eligibility under our criteria. No extensive documentation required — we operate on trust and reserve the right to request clarification.
A rewritten, stress-tested, professional-grade script that is a fundamentally different object than what you submitted. Stronger structure, clearer engine, working dramaturgy. Detailed structural notes from development professionals. Lab alumni network. Slate consideration pathway.
Writers from underserved communities across Canada and globally. Specific communities include: African writers, Indigenous writers, refugee/immigrant writers, Caribbean writers, Latin American writers, South Asian writers, Canadian writers from underserved regions.
Applications accepted during open cohort periods. Check the cohort dates above.
Is there evidence of dramatic instinct? Does the writing sample show structural awareness, even if incomplete? The sample tells us where you are.
We select for resilience, self-awareness, and willingness to rewrite.
Applications open soon.
Applications for Cohort 1 open January 2027. Join the waitlist to be notified when applications open.
Cohort 2: Applications open July 2027. Deadline: October 31, 2027.