ArtsLink NB, The Industrial Parks Collective, and USTATION are pleased to announce the official launch of the Creative Spaces Project. Join us Wednesday, June 22nd, 6pm at USTATION, 87 Prince William Street in Saint John.
This event will include a presentation of the project, its partners, and a showcase of local arts and culture featuring paintings by member artists, live drawing with Brandon Hicks, and DJ No No spinning tunes.
Funded through the Saint John Community Arts Board, Creative Spaces is a summer-long project to identify key areas of need for space among artists, creative professionals, and arts organizations, with outreach activities aimed at local businesses, arts organizations, and property owners to identify spaces in the city that are appropriate for use as art studios, offices, and performing arts events.
Are you an artist or creative professional in need of studio space, workspace, or performance space? You are encouraged to complete our Creative Spaces Survey online.
The CMAC certificate is a one-of-a-kind program built specifically for developing the skills and knowledge of people that aspire to be arts leaders in the Maritimes and across the country. Our certificate is offered online and designed to fit the needs of working professionals wishing to effectively lead their organizations, projects, and ideas in today’s changing ecosystem.
In one year, gain the knowledge you need to run or assist a thriving arts or cultural organization with a practical online certificate catered to those working in, or aspiring to work in the arts and cultural sectors. Build confidence and competencies to lead in arts and culture with knowledge in governance, leadership, planning, effective operations, relationship and revenue management.
Benefits
All courses are fully virtual
One course per semester during one calendar year
Tuition partially subsidized for this year’s program
Instruction and interviews with senior professionals
Develop a capstone business plan as a take-away
Graduates will receive an official certificate of proficiency
Cost
Thanks to generous support from the Government of New Brunswick, most expenses for this year’s program have been subsidized. We are glad to offer this certificate at a low cost to you, the student.
Total price:
$1,750
Subsidy:
$1,000
You pay:
$750
Applying
Application Deadline: Aug. 5, 2022
Applicants should apply early as enrolment is limited. Applications will be reviewed upon receipt and will be accepted until limit is reached.
Ideal applicants have some university training and experience in the field of arts and culture, at an organizational level.
This certificate is open to all Canadians applicants. Subsidy can be applied to Canadian residents only.
Many of our members contacted us to say that they were interested in our last anti-oppression intensive workshop but weren’t able to make it on a weekend. With that in mind, we’re re-offering the same workshop during the work week!
Carmel is back to facilitate, this time on Wednesday and Thursday, May 25th and 26th.
This 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 May 25 and 26, 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.
We invite artists, arts collectives, curators, scholars, or arts professionals to submit proposals for presentations, performances, temporary installations, interventions, or workshops on the theme of FUTURE POSSIBLE for ArtsLink NB‘s inaugural Arts Atlantic Symposium.
We’re sad that our intern, Lauren Anderson, has now finished her two semesters of work with us. Lauren has been working on her BA in Psychology and is pursuing a career in HR after she completes her CPHR exam this May. Thanks so much for all the work you did with us, Lauren! We wish you much success in your future!
We are greatly saddened to hear of the closing of CreatedHere Magazine. CreatedHere was established in 2014 to discover and document the stories of New Brunswick artists and improve their ability to present themselves regionally, nationally, and internationally through thought-provoking critical writing.
CreatedHere supported NB’s arts sector by providing opportunities for arts writers and artists to reach a national audience and provided paying work for critical arts writers. Now with the closure of this publication, on top of the closure of Canadian Art Magazine earlier in the pandemic, New Brunswick’s artists and arts writers have very few avenues for promotion and public critique of their work.
ArtsLink strongly believes that critical arts writing is vital to the health of an arts community. To that end, we hosted two intensive workshops on critical arts writing in 2018 and 2019, and many of the participants in those workshops went on to write for CreatedHere. The loss of this publication leaves a void in New Brunswick’s arts landscape.
Without the representation of our artists in periodicals across Canada, our artists are at a serious disadvantage. Whether it is a lack of understanding of the unique qualities of Atlantic art-making or unfamiliarity from jurors, promoters, festivals, or managers outside of NB, this contributes to the export difficulties our arts sector faces. New Brunswick ranks 7th among the 10 provinces for its relative trade deficit, exporting only 29 cents for every dollar of cultural imports.
The critical discourse developed through the lens of arts writing helps cultivate art excellence. It helps our artists frame themselves in an international context, contributing their voices and perspectives to a global arts community. Our sector needs to participate in this larger conversation. Understanding how to talk to artists about their work, how to contextualize work (in contemporary arts discourse, via one’s local influences, the meanings embedded in form etc.), and understanding your audience or market are all integral to taking up the task of writing for the arts.
We are grateful for the contribution that CreatedHere made to the New Brunswick arts sector over the near decade of its existence, and it is our fervent hope that arts writers and artists will once again have many opportunities to publish like those that CreatedHere worked so hard to provide.
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.
