Creating a place for creativity: Professor Peggy Collins on storytelling, community and careers in the arts 

As an author and illustrator with more than 40 published books, Professor Peggy Collins knows that creative careers involve more than artistic talent. At Loyalist College, she’s helping Animation and Game Development students develop the technical skills, collaborative experience and professional confidence to build careers of their own. 

For Peggy Collins, storytelling has always been at the centre of her creative work. Before becoming a professor and coordinator for Loyalist College’s Animation and Game Development program, Peggy built a career as a children’s book author and illustrator. Her work has appeared in more than 40 books published in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, and she continues to write and illustrate while teaching the next generation of artists. 

Whether she’s working on a book or helping students build their own creative worlds, Peggy comes back to the same guiding principle: “Creative techniques and tech skills are essential to what we learn,” she says. “But all the technical aspects, from character design and world building to programming, come alive through a great story.” 

In animation and game development, bringing a story to life is rarely the work of one person. Artists, animators, designers, writers and programmers contribute different skills and perspectives to the same production. For Peggy, those differences make the creative process stronger. “The arts is not a place for exclusion,” she says. “When people think differently, it’s actually better for problem-solving.” 

It’s a belief that has helped shape not only how she teaches, but the kind of community she wants students to experience at Loyalist. 

More than a classroom 

When Collins thinks about the environment she wants students to learn in, she draws on her own experience studying illustration at Sheridan College. She remembers what it meant to be surrounded by other artists, working alongside people who shared her interests while bringing different approaches and perspectives to their work. 

It’s an experience she wanted to recreate when she began teaching at Loyalist. “You can’t force community, but you can create the environment for it to happen,” she says. Collins describes the Animation and Game Development classrooms and labs as a “third place”—somewhere students can work, create, eat lunch or simply spend time even when they don’t have class. 

That atmosphere is cultivated from the beginning. On the first day of the program, returning second- and third-year students are invited to meet the incoming class. They play drawing games, share snacks and begin building connections across cohorts. Students also benefit from dedicated studio spaces shared across all three years, giving them opportunities to learn from people at different stages of their creative development. 

For some students, college becomes a place to find people who understand interests they may previously have pursued largely on their own. For Peggy, the goal is an environment where students feel they belong, while still being encouraged to approach creative work in their own ways. 

Learning to create together 

Community becomes particularly important when students begin working on larger productions. Animation and game development require collaboration, and at Loyalist, students learn to work through the same kinds of challenges that arise when different creative specialists contribute to one project. 

Beginning with group productions, students develop games and animations from concept through completion. They plan stories, design characters and environments, build assets and work together through the production process. The results aren’t always perfect. Not every project unfolds as expected, and not every group approaches the work in the same way, but Collins sees value in those experiences. 

Students learn to communicate their ideas, contribute their strengths, respond to feedback and work through problems that can’t always be solved independently. By third year, students are also developing individual capstone projects and demo reels that showcase the areas they want to pursue professionally. The progression gives them experience both contributing to a team and taking responsibility for a substantial project of their own. 

Preparing for a career that doesn’t follow one path 

Collins knows that graduating with strong creative work is only one part of building a career. Her own professional life has combined illustration, publishing, graphic design and teaching. Throughout it, she’s continued to take on new projects and learn new skills.  

“We prepare our students for the realities of working in this field,” she says. “We teach them how to network, leverage their skills, build business plans and be nimble and entrepreneurial.” Alongside animation, game development and digital production, students explore practical aspects of creative work, including grant applications, project budgets, professional branding and crowdfunding. 

Collins has also worked to create opportunities for students to tailor their portfolios toward particular interests. Depending on their goals, that could mean focusing on animation, game development or illustration for areas such as publishing and licensing. It’s an approach informed by the realities of an industry where creative professionals may move between contracts, independent projects, studios and other kinds of work. 

For Peggy, the ability to recognize and apply your skills in different settings is an important part of building a sustainable creative career. 

Staying creative in a changing industry 

The creative industries Collins entered are not the same ones her students will enter. New software, production methods and artificial intelligence continue to change how creative work is made. Collins knows these developments bring genuine uncertainty, particularly for students thinking about their future employment. 

She doesn’t dismiss those concerns, but she also encourages students to look beyond any single technology or career destination and consider the qualities that help artists adapt. “Artists are incredibly resilient,” she says. “Technology and industry will continue to change, but if you remain adaptable and strategic, there will always be new opportunities.” 

It’s a perspective reflected in her own work. Alongside teaching, Collins continues to illustrate professionally and has taken on new creative challenges, including developing a middle-grade novel after years of working primarily on picture books. 

For someone who has spent a career helping bring other people’s stories to life, it’s another opportunity to learn something new. And it’s the kind of curiosity she hopes her students will carry with them, wherever their creative careers lead. 

Explore Animation and Game Development at Loyalist College

Interested in bringing characters, stories and interactive worlds to life? Discover how Loyalist’s Animation and Game Development program combines creative storytelling, industry-standard technology and hands-on projects to help students build their skills and professional portfolios.

Explore the Animation and Game Development program