The Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation, an active supporter of artistic education and growth, offers a yearly program of funding to assist and encourage excellence in the visual arts.
Christiana Myers has been selected by an independent jury to receive a $5,000 Sheila Mackay Advanced Studies Scholarship. Ms. Myers, a leader in the New Brunswick contemporary arts scene, is a respected curator, teacher, writer, and organizational director. She will build on her deep engagement in the visual arts through the pursuit of a PhD in Art History at the University of Glasgow.
ArtsLink NB is presenting Dreaming Inventive Futures, its first-ever intensive workshop on anti-oppression in the arts April 23 and 24. Many arts organizations are attempting to find ways to incorporate anti-racism and anti-oppressive policies but need some guidance on how to do so in a way that moves beyond tokenism. With this in mind, this is the first workshop ArtsLink NB has offered that is geared not only towards artists, but also toward professionals working for creative organizations.
This two-day virtual workshop continues the series presented to ArtsLink NB members on business development and career-management subjects. Past topics have included budgeting, documentation, and critical arts writing. The decision to hold this workshop virtually was made due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to allow participants to attend from across the province.
Workshop Description
Dreaming Inventive Futures: Anti-Oppression in the Creative Sector is a two-day workshop and discussion space that combines foundational anti-oppressive modalities, peer-based learning, personal reflection, and active discussion as teaching tools. During this digital space, participants will explore approaches to anti-racist curation, responsible and curious storytelling, organizationally care-based artistic practices rooted in disability justice frameworks, address ways to disrupt genre and aesthetic hierarchies within cultural industries, and discuss sustainable methods to intentional cross-practice collaboration.
These themes will be grounded in disrupting tokenism in the arts sector, moving beyond defensiveness and fear in creative work, imagination, and accessibility. The aim is that participants will feel supported and motivated to engage in systems change work within the arts as well as more confident in continuing anti-oppressive conversations in their work personally and professionally.
About Carmel Farabakhsh
Carmel Farahbakhsh (they/them) is a community educator, arts maker, and youth worker. They have collaborated on the Khyber Centre for the Arts board for four years, and are enjoying their new position as co-director of local music festival EVERYSEEKER. They recently transitioned from a five-year term coordinating South House Sexual and Gender Resource Centre to working as the Executive Director at the Youth Project, seeing a direct link between this community work and access to creative spaces and the arts community.
As the Executive Director of the Youth Project, Carmel holds a youth-centric approach to organizational movement and support. Carmel builds their vision from their community education background and aims to apply an anti-racist and trauma-informed framework to their work. They also collaborate and organize with local initiatives, artist-run-centres, and community partners with an aim to create wider 2SQTBIPOC community and support systems within the HRM.
Registration
The sessions will take place April 23 and 24, 2022. The intensive workshop will be held virtually via Zoom and is free for members of ArtsLink NB. Sessions will run from 9am to 4pm each day. To register, cultural sector workers should send an email to Jericho Knopp, jeri@artslinknb.com, with their name, their field or organization, and a brief description of why they’re interested in taking the workshop.
The Jane LeBlanc Legacy Fund is thrilled to announce our four music celebrity jurors for the inaugural Arnold LeBlanc Songwriter Award. We have confirmed Lennie Gallant, Joel Plaskett, Jenn Grant, and Rose Cousins for the music jury, and we are excited!
Along with that exciting news, we would like to announce that Moncton’s BRAINWORKS has come on board as a new sponsor, and thanks to them, the Arnold LeBlanc Songwriter award value has increased from $1000 to $2000!
BRAINWORKS is an international award-winning bilingual full-service marketing and creative agency. They are a team of passionate professionals specializing in helping clients get from where they are to where they want to be. From startups and local campaigns to national activations and collaborations with major brands – They are here to help their clients push the limits of what’s possible.
The Arnold LeBlanc Songwriter Award seeks to spotlight talented New Brunswick songwriters at all levels in honour of Miramichi-born Arnold LeBlanc. Arnold was gifted with a golden singing voice. As a young child, he sang in the church choir and continued to sing well into his golden years. Arnold could whistle entire songs with perfect pitch and sang every day of his life.
Arnold LeBlanc Songwriter Award
Eligible Music Category: roots, folk, and country music
Deadline: May 20, 2022
Cash Award: $2000
Two-year membership with Music·Musique NB
One-year membership with Writers’ Federation of NB
Submission Guidelines
Submit one vocal recording with music (mp3, aif, or m4a format) of your best song with written lyrics and a letter explaining who you are and your background in music (half-page). Also, tell us, why do you feel this is your best song? Nominations of music artists by individuals and organizations in the music and songwriting community are welcome.
As is the case with human cells, each interpersonal interaction is unique, but those separate events are what allows for individual growth in society. That perspective seems to create a parallel between cellular and human interactions, and underlines their importance and necessity for symbiosis.
Nicole Haché’s installation, Autobiographie collective/Collective autobiography (2019), is imprinted with her reflection and sensibility towards those interpersonal relations and the meaning of a collective symbiosis.
Her work celebrates diversity and brings one to reflect on the important role each of us plays in society.
Autobiographie collective is on display at the Center des arts d’Edmundston N.-B. (Canada) from March 31 to June 9, 2022. The opening will take place on March 31 at 17 o’clock. On June 9 from 10 to 11 a.m. the artist will present a talk about his creative process.
THIRD SHIFT Festival of Public Contemporary Artworks takes place August 19-21
THIRD SHIFT is coming up quickly and we are putting a call out to community organizations and local businesses to be part of our signature event! Are you interested in being a sponsor? Creating an art project with your team and sharing it at our festival? Donating an item to our silent auction? Volunteering to help with the festival in August? Just send us an email and we can chat about how we can support each other! Get in touch: tiersespace@gmail.com
The Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick (WFNB) and The Fiddlehead have announced the shortlisted titles for the 7th annual New Brunswick Book Awards. The winners will be revealed at an awards ceremony on Saturday, June 4, as part of WFNB’s annual WordSpring writing festival in Fredericton.
The program will celebrate books published in the 2021 calendar year in the poetry, fiction, nonfiction and children’s picture books categories.
The finalists are as follows:
Mrs. Dunster’s Award for Fiction Judge: Richard Cumyn is the author of nine books of fiction, most recently The Sign for Migrant Soul, and a past fiction editor of The Antigonish Review.
Amber McMillan, The Running Tree (Goose Lane Editions), Fredericton
Beth Powning, The Sister’s Tale (Knopf Canada), Markhamville
Alice Kitts Memorial Award for Excellence in Children’s Writing Judge: Author of over 27 books, Dr. Kari-Lynn Winters is a children’s author, playwright, performer, and scholar.
Jodie Callaghan,Ga’s The Train (Second Story Press), Campbellton; translated by Joe Wilmot, and illustrated Georgia Lesley
Leo LaFleur, The Errand: The Queen (Simply Read Books), Saint John; illustrated by Adam Oehlers
Riel Nason, Disaster at the Highland Games (Chocolate River Publishing), Quispamsis; illustrated by Nathasha Pilotte
The Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize Judge: An editor atRoommagazine, Isabella Wang is the author of the chapbook, On Forgetting a Language and her full-length debut, Pebble Swing.
Triny Finlay, Myself a Paperclip (Goose Lane Editions), Fredericton
Jane Tims,a glimpse of waterfall (Indie published), Rusagonis
Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick Nonfiction Award Judge: Julie Sedivy is a language scientist, editor, and award-winning writer of nonfiction whose work crosses and recombines scientific and literary genres.
Michael Boudreau and Bonnie Huskins, Just the Usual Work: The Social Worlds of Ida Martin, Working-Class Diarist (McGill-Queen’s University Press), Fredericton
Janet Coulter Sanford, Memories on the Bounty: A Story of Friendship, Love, and Adventure (Nimbus), Moncton
The New Brunswick Book Awards are open to traditionally published and self-published authors who have lived in the province for three of the last five years, including the award year.
The book awards program represents a partnership between the Writers’ Federation, which for more than 30 years has passionately supported the development of home-grown writers at all stages of development, and The Fiddlehead, Canada’s oldest literary magazine, which has nurtured New Brunswick’s literary culture for more than 75 years.
As members of the arts community in the Greater Fredericton Area, we write to express our enthusiastic support for the new Performing Arts Centre (PAC) that is proposed to replace the much-loved but failing Playhouse. Many of us are practicing artists who have performed at the Playhouse, including Juno and ECMA Award-winning musicians and actors on international stages; some of us lead local or provincial organizations that help the creative arts thrive, including those that rely on the Playhouse as a venue to present performances and events. All of us recognize that a professional facility such as the Playhouse is an indispensable component of this vibrant city’s cultural life. Fredericton would be a much lesser place without it.
As a community, we count on the Playhouse to present the best available performing artists in music, theatre, dance, comedy, and more; we also count on it to provide space where our own, home-grown artists, musicians, dancers, theatre companies – whether youthful or seasoned, amateur or professional – can create and present their work. It is a place where we gather to celebrate creativity, to connect with each other, and to enjoy an enhanced quality of life.
However, while it has served us well for several decades, the Playhouse is now beyond its useful life; its design and condition make refurbishing it unfeasible. We cannot lose this valuable community asset. It must be replaced.
The leaders at the Fredericton Playhouse and the City of Fredericton have a bold plan to build a new PAC to replace the current facility. Like the dozens of downtown businesses that signed a similar joint letter last Spring, we fully support this plan to invest in cultural infrastructure in our region – a plan that will build on the Playhouse’s record of success and take it to a new level by providing greater capacity, increased versatility, better functionality, and an improved audience experience.
The City of Fredericton has identified this project as its top priority for new infrastructure, committing $14 million to its construction and commissioning a design for the new facility. We encourage other levels of government to do their part to make the PAC a reality by providing the necessary funding to build it.
As we embark on our collective recovery from the impact of COVID-19 on the performing arts, the PAC will be a most welcome investment. We urge all levels of government to work in partnership with each other and the community to address this urgent priority for our cultural sector.
Yours sincerely,
Judie Acquin-Miksovsky
Indigenous Artist
Zach Atkinson
Coordinator, Shivering Songs Festival
John Ball
Actor, Theatre Director, and Chair, UNB Dept. of English
No Man Is An Island Streaming on-demand March 16-27. Tune in for a beloved story enhanced with footage from the Partridge Island quarantine station and the living history museum, Kings Landing!
Inspired by the history of Partridge Island, a major arrival point in New Brunswick for Irish immigrants during the mid-19th century. The play is a story of immigration, sacrifice and belief, about facing one’s fear of others, and what it takes to make a community. The story focuses on a group of doctors who clash over the treatment of patients in a quarantine centre.
Tickets are $15 and can be purchased by visiting NMIAITickets or clicking the button below.
In 2021 Nantume Violet set off to meet Buluma Ochungo Mordecai in Busia, after nine months of intense research to connect with the artist.
When they met, the eighty-seven-year-old artist actively reflected on the specific events that inspired many of his artworks, sharing memories of his travels, jobs, and time studying at Mount Allison University.
Buluma is currently an elder and cultural leader in Bugwe kingdom. He was born to Wabwire William Ngakayi and Nekesa Janet in Busumba in the county of Samia-Bugwe, Uganda. The second of seven children, he attended Busia Primary School before joining Budo Kings College. Six years later, Buluma obtained the Cambridge School Certificate and, in 1956, he was admitted to the University College of East Africa, now Makerere University, in Kampala. He joined the Makerere Art School at the age of twenty-three and studied painting with Margaret Trowell and sculpture with Gregory Maloba and Cecil Todd. After graduating from Makerere University, Buluma applied to the Royal College of Arts in London. Three months later, in the fall of 1960, he received a Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship and instead joined the Fine Arts Department at Mount Allison University, where he studied painting, sculpture, and English for two years. In 1961, he received a Fine Arts Certificate from Mount Allison. Buluma went on to have a rich career in his home country where he worked as a practicing artist, teacher, and public servant for six decades.
In 2021, the Owens commissioned Nantume Violet, curator and director at the contemporary art gallery UNDER GROUND in Kampala, Uganda, to write an essay on Buluma’s life and career. This essay is part of a new online publishing initiative focused on sharing such histories. It was made possible thanks to the ongoing historical research and alumni engagement of Jane Tisdale, Fine Arts Conservator.
In parallel to the fait main | handmade exhibition, public activities (free and festive!) will be presented:
On Wednesday, March 2 at noon, artist Jacinthe Loranger will present her work and her artistic process during an artist’s talk presented at the Aberdeen Cultural Centre in collaboration with the Atelier d’estampe Imago. Jacinthe Loranger lives and works in Montreal. Her practice revolves around screen printing and is deployed in various forms such as installation, object making and collage. This conference will also be broadcasted by Teams. To receive the link, interested parties can contact alisa.arsenault@umoncton.ca
On the evening of Wednesday, March 2, from 5 to 7 p.m., the opening of the exhibition will be held at the Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen. Artists Amy Ash, Andrea-Jane Cornell and Jacinthe Loranger will be in attendance, along with curator Alisa Arsenault.
On Friday, March 4, starting at 7:30 p.m., artist Andrea-Jane Cornell will present a sound performance, preceded by a performance by Allumette, on the 2nd floor of the Aberdeen Cultural Centre. Andrea-Jane Cornell is a sound artist based in Portland, Maine, who transforms and transmits sound material over radio frequencies. Space is limited, so register for a free ticket. This PRE:FLUX event is presented in partnership with Galerie Sans Nom. Visit the website for more information on the RE:FLUX festival.
The artists in the exhibition have also been invited to share their influences on the web in a series of videos, The Greatest Hits of the Internet, Vol. 2, which will be published throughout the duration of the exhibition and can be viewed on GALRC’s YouTube channel.
The exhibition fait main | handmade runs through March 27, 2022, at the Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen. Curated by Alisa Arsenault and exploring practices where the handmade is intrinsic to the work of contemporary artists, the exhibition features the work of Amy Ash, Marjolaine Bourgeois, Andrea-Jane Cornell, Zoé Fortier, Allie Gattor and Jacinthe Loranger. Hours of operation are from 1 to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday, and admission is free.
Double-vaccination and masks are mandatory for all events.
These initiatives are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts Re-opening Fund. Thanks also to : Imago Print Studio, Galerie Sans Nom / RE:FLUX, Aberdeen Cultural Centre.
