Region of Waterloo Arts Fund awards 36 grants
Waterloo Region - The Region of Waterloo Arts Fund is awarding 36 grants, totaling $201,216, in response to dynamic proposals submitted by a wide range of artists and arts organizations throughout Waterloo Region.
The Arts Fund initially received a record number of 90 stage-one applications, for a total request of $677,147. Due to the impact of COVID-19 restrictions, precautions taken to support the arts included inviting all of the applicants to submit to stage-two; in the end, 67 requests were received and assessed.
The mandate of the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund is to contribute to the creative vitality in our community by providing meaningful grants and other advocacy support to local individual artists and to arts and culture organizations. Since it was established in 2002, the Arts Fund has supported 775 projects, for a total community investment of $4,223,196.
In keeping with the Region’s commitment to innovation, beginning in the fall of 2020, the Arts Fund will move to a single-stage, paper-free application process. This user-friendly approach will mean that all applicants will complete and submit their requests online. Visit www.artsfund.ca for details and updates.
Waterloo Region generously allocates the equivalent of 67 cents per capita to the Arts Fund so that residents and visitors alike may benefit from the vibrancy of the arts and culture sectors. This support is administered in the form of grants awarded by the Arts Fund, a not-for-profit corporation served by a volunteer Board of Directors. The Arts Fund is one of the few granting bodies in Canada that awards grants directly to artist-led projects. Often, these supported projects are able to attract additional funds through earned revenue, grants from provincial, federal or private sources, sponsorships, private, and in-kind donations.
The Arts Fund welcomes grant applications in all arts disciplines, from individual artists and arts organizations based in the cities of Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo and the townships of North Dumfries, Wellesley, Wilmot, and Woolwich. Applicants may apply in the spring or fall of each year for projects that will occur within the following 12 months.
Grants awarded in the spring 2020 round are listed below:
Organizations and Collectives
Four Corners Collective – Anita Walsh (Waterloo): $6,700 for the Adapted Chamber Music Series, specially selected and with friendly pre-show sensory programming designed for special needs children and their families.
Grounded Theory Collective – Jeff Cowell (Kitchener): $10,000 for production of “It’s Who I Am,” an album of 8 social justice and climate emergency-themed songs in a global music style.
Shy Harry – Eric Bolton (Cambridge): $6,780 for the music production of an EP of original songs by this established Cambridge pop-rock band.
Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre – Lucia Harrison (Kitchener): $5,000 towards the next phase of the ongoing Neighbours quilt project, which combines storytelling and performance with the production of a community quilt that weaves together newcomers’ stories with a local Indigenous perspective and approach.
Vera Causa Opera – Dylan Langan (Cambridge): $5,000 towards a new production of “Hansel & Gretel”, which will integrate ballet and opera elements, using local musicians and artists.
Conoculto/Cosmic Fishing Theatre – Jenn Addesso (Cambridge): $8,341 for the devising of and collection of audio and visual materials for “Darling”, a site-specific performance piece, based on a diary and archival materials about a woman’s life and times in 1970s Cambridge.
Rainbow Reels Queer and Trans Film Festival – Hannah Enns (Kitchener): $5,500 towards online DIY filmmaking workshops and a Christmas market in support of this established film festival.
Unwrap Theatre – Alten Wilmot (Kitchener): $4,000 towards creation of the script for “Blackberry: the Musical”, based on interviews with local individuals involved with the corporation.
Green Light Arts – Cairin Lowerison (Kitchener): $8,500 for the development workshop of a new performance piece entitled “(m)otherhood”.
One Strange Night Productions – Alexander Wright (Kitchener): $3,000 for artists’ fees for “And Moving On…”, a series of 4 short, original music-and-theatre anthology pieces.
WOOM Collective – Carly Derderian (Waterloo): $5,000 for rehearsal costs and visual and audio materials for “Retail Therapy”, an original auto-ethnographic, site-specific performance piece about working in retail in Waterloo.
Backyard Theatre – Kathleen Cleland Moyer (Kitchener): $3,000 towards the creation of “Barn Talk”, a new 3-episode radio comedy.
Individual Artists
Tara Butler (Kitchener): $8,000 towards workshop and production expenses for “Dance Takes Berlin”, a showcase of new choreography by Allen Kaeja and David Earle, showcasing the unique voices of each choreographer, and dancer involved.
Claudia Aguirre (Waterloo): $1,150 towards expenses for the online presentation of KW Flamenco Fest.
Helman Wilhelm (Kitchener): $7,050 towards filming expenses for “An Apology,” a short, realistic drama with an anti-racism theme.
Jessica Smith (Kitchener): $5,000 towards filming expenses for “The Set-Up,” a short LGBTQ-themed romantic comedy.
Nicholas Dragas (Kitchener): $5,000 towards filming expenses for “Pariah,” a short drama/horror film with an LGBTQ theme.
Nancy Silcox (New Hamburg): $2,000 towards a biography about renowned local opera star Paul Frey.
Amy-Susanna Compton (Waterloo): $5,800 for research and a first draft of “Nelson”, a novel based on a Mennonite family living in Hespeler during World War II.
Ashley Hynd (Kitchener): $10,000 for “Minjimendan Wiisagidenaniwe*: once they spoke Anishinaabemowin” (*title translates to “in a state of remembering hurt tongues”), an anthology of Erasure poems in the form of traditional Anishinaabeg mythologies, using The UNESCO Language Vitality and Endangerment Document as a source text.
Emily Urquhart (Kitchener): $6,000 towards research and writing a first draft of “Griefs and Wonders”, an essay collection of creative non-fiction pieces exploring different kinds and experiences of belief, broadly defined, to be published by the Ontario-based independent press, Biblioasis.
Lori Strauss (Waterloo): $1,200 towards a collection of stories about working in the local rubber manufacturing industry, as part of the young adult series “Between Worlds”.
Veda Hingert-McDonald (Kitchener): $5,850 for the commissioning of a new, environmentally-themed piece for violin, piano and electronics, by composer Keenan Reimer-Watts.
Chia Yin Wu (Waterloo): $1,275 for the creation of a song cycle entitled “Blood and the Moon” that merges Western classical and Tiawanese musical paradigms.
Stephen Trothen (Kitchener): $3,650 towards the mixing and mastering of 10 songs for an upcoming CD “Pink Objects” by the band Treephones.
Christopher Torti (Cambridge): $9,400 for musicians’ fees for a proposed children’s musical “The Enchanted Forest & the Star of Evermore”.
Roger Skelly (Waterloo): $3,720 for artists’ fees and production engineering for recordings to be used in “Sympathetic Strings”, a series of interactive, accessible concerts for school-age audiences.
Richard Garvey (Kitchener): $10,000 for recording and filming of a live album and video of original songs using a big band and string section, by this established local musician.
Marcus Adam Wanka (Kitchener): $3,000 towards recording his first solo album “Mark V,” a collection of power pop/rock/blues original songs.
Paul Francescutti and Daiene Vernile (Waterloo): $4,725 towards “Stone Soup: a Gleaner’s Story,” a documentary focusing on the work of the Gleaners, a Cambridge-based organization, in gathering, recycling and processing unused or unwanted fruits and vegetables into reconstituted soup mixes for distribution world-wide.
Stephen Trim (Kitchener): $8,375 towards “Step, Scale and Sing: a Mini-Musical Anecdote”, a new musical about finding your passion and your path, set in the local arts scene.
Nada Abusaleh (Waterloo): $10,000 for artist fees for a production of “SHADED”, an original, multi-sensory, interactive, magical-realist performance piece exploring Arabic superstitions about footwear, from a woman’s perspective.
Sarah Kernohan (Kitchener): $6,100 for creation costs for “Snow-blind”, a multi-scale drawing series on a snow theme, coming out of research work in Banff and the UK.
Logan Soeder (Kitchener): $3,600 for creation, installation, and gallery costs for “ ‘Who ‘ not ‘What’ “, an exhibition of original landscape watercolours with an ecological theme.
Kai Reimer-Watts (Kitchener): $7,500 for artists’ fees, materials, technical support, and installation costs for “Reconnection”, an interactive sculpture/video installation project planned for the Robert Langan Art Gallery (WLU).
Aislinn Thomas (Kitchener): $2,000 for curatorial costs and the ASL translation of “A piece of cloth, stretched taut”, a planned descriptive tour of artworks in the KWAG collection. ASL translation by artist and poet Jolanta Lapiak.
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For more information regarding the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund contact the Arts Fund at info@artsfund.ca