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Presented by the Assembly of BC Arts Councils and Van Dopp and Associates, the BC Cultural Crawl was launched as a modest BC Day celebration ten years ago. Today, it has grown into a cornerstone provincial event spanning the entire month of August.

The 2011 Crawl already promises to include more events and communities than ever before. It’s time to start thinking about how you’ll participate. Perhaps you’ll plan a small outdoor arts festival in your town, host an intimate concert in your living room, or take a trip to the north of the province like you’ve always meant to. Perhaps your arts organization will take the lead in your city and organize a weekend-long cultural crawl, or you’ll pack up your family and brave the journey to breathtaking shores of Haida Gwaii.

However you plan to explore British Columbia this summer, the BC Cultural Crawl team is here to guide you along the way. By logging on to bcculturalcrawl.com you’ll have access to our Cultural Crawl Toolkit, a day-by-day list of festivals and events, and a comprehensive list of all participating BC communities. You will also find suggested community cultural crawls, studio tours and itineraries for week-long adventures and featured afternoon escapes.

If you are interested in organizing a Cultural Crawl in your community, click here.

Online Magazine, Triple Canopy, Call for Proposals: 2011 commissions program
Deadline: February 14, 2011

100 Mile: Calling on all artists for the Parkside shows

100 Mile: Eclectica Choir calls for singers

Call for Submissions: Ten scholarships for international MFA program (Berlin and New York City)
Deadline: March 1, 2011

Vancouver Island or the Gulf Islands: Short Fiction Contest
Deadline: March 1, 2011

Summer Residency at Künstlerhaus Dortmund – Call for entries!
Deadline: February 28, 2011

The First Nations Information Governance Centre National Logo Contest
Deadline: February 14, 2011

Surrey: Expressions of Interest – City Hall Atrium Project
Deadline: March 15, 2011

Richmond: Request for Qualifications – RCMP Community Safety Building Public Art Project
Deadline: February 25, 2011

Dufftown, Scotland: 2011 Artist in Residence
Deadline: February 25, 2011

Request for Expressions of Interest United Way of Winnipeg
Deadline: March 18, 2011

Volunteer Coordinator Vancouver Folk Music Festival
Deadline: February 20, 2010

Exhibition Opportunity: Fate of the Forest

Call for Submissions: Alain Piroir Gallery, Montreal, contemporary print media

Call for Entries: 2011 Canadian Aboriginal Writing & Arts Challenge
Deadline: March 31, 2011

Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery/John R. Math: Call for Art – February’s Theme “Animals”
Deadline: February 27, 2011

This grant is in support of our Non-profit Technology Development Initiative. The purpose of this grant is to help organizations in Canada develop online communications.

As part of the grant, our company will match dollar-for-dollar, up to a maximum of $10,000 per organization, to help develop their online presence through websites, social media and advertising. Through this grant program, Canadians will see a total of $1,000,000 distributed to communities across the country.

The goals of the program are to:

• Increase accessibility to available services for marginalized individuals;
• Increase the capacity for organizations to operate effectively using online communication; and
• Lower organizational core operating costs.

Please note, it is essential to fully investigate the eligibility requirements of this grant before applying.

If you are interested in participating in the program, please review the accompanying documentation and fill out an application form.

This is the second year of the Grant and we are excited to make an impact again. Join last year’s applicants, that included:

Telus World of Science
Vancouver Big Brothers/Sisters
Association of Neighbourhood Houses of BC
BC Association of Family Resource Programs
BC Blind Sports and Recreation Association
1 At a Time Rescue Society
Antidote Network
Blanshard Community Centre
Bridges for Women
CapriCCio Vocal Ensemble
Civic Orchestra of Victoria
Cook Street Village Activity Centre
Friends of Path Spinal Cord Injury Group
Goldstream Co-op Preschool
Krishnamurti Education Centre of Canada
Literacy Victoria
Mission Against Malaria Society
Open Space Movement Foundation
Pacifica Housing
Saanich Volunteer Services Society
Semiahmoo Volunteer Community Police Society
Sooke Region Community Health Initiative
Sources Community Resource Centres
Swanwick Centre
Vancouver Art Therapy Foundation
Vancouver Island Co-op Preschool Association
Victoria Brain Injury Society
Victoria Community Literacy Planning Committee
Victoria Need Crisis Line
Victoria Women’s Sexual Assault Centre
Victoria Yogathon
Victoria Youth Clinic
West Vancouver Community Centres Services Society
Young Artists Experience Society
Greater Victoria Concert Band
Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame

Forms and Resources

Grant for Change Guidelines
Grant for Change Online Application

Questions?

contact@pixelsweatshop.com

We are celebrating our 15th year anniversary in 2011. As part of CMMT 15 celebrations, on May 18, 2011, we will host Higher Aspirations: A meeting of Art and Science. The exhibit will be highlighted by the work of Sohan Qadri and will celebrate the integration of the arts and sciences. It will stimulate creativity and inspire researchers to examine new ways of seeking knowledge. We invites visual artists to submit proposals to showcase their work during this exhibit.

Read more.

His talent flows through his fingers. He literally rocks to the rhythm of the music he plays with an expert’s touch on the grand piano.

Yet Sky Mundell is blind, profoundly deaf, is autistic and has cerebral palsy.

The 19-year-old pianist wowed the judges and audience alike at the finale for Vancouver Island’s Got Talent Jan. 21, as he had throughout the competition, with two pieces dedicated to his mother and sister.

Read the full article here.

A $650,000 vase purchased by the National Gallery of Canada last week was forged in the East Kootenay.

New York City jewellery designer George Paulding Farnham created the vase between 1900 and 1905 to celebrate his acquisition of the Ptarmigan Mine, a silver mine in the Purcell mountains near Radium.

The Ptarmigan Vase, a gold, silver and copper objet d’art, was sold to the National Gallery at an auction in New York last week using funds from Canadian Heritage’s Movable Cultural Property Program.

Read the full article here.

VANCOUVER, CANADA – Celebrating their 40th anniversary season, the Vancouver Chamber Choir and Artistic Director Jon Washburn are pleased to present the 31st annual National Conductors’ Symposium concert.

THE MAGNIFICENT MADRIGAL Canzonas for Choir will be at 8pm Saturday, February 12 at Ryerson United Church, Vancouver with the workshop’s five participants as guest conductors and Stephen Smith, piano.

Each guest conductor receives significant time working with Canada’s premier vocal ensemble, the Vancouver Chamber Choir, during five days of intensive masterclasses. Always a season highlight, the NCS concert provides a forum to display newly developed choral techniques, conducting gestures and score interpretation.

Read the complete article here.

B.C. Spirit Festivals will kick off around the province this month celebrating the first anniversary of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, and locally that will come in the form of the Mail Art Olympix.

The McMillan Arts Centre in Parksville was given a $16,000 grant from the province to put on the event. Other art centres around the province were also given funding to hold commemorative festivals.

The Mail Art Olympix debuted in Courtenay in 2009 and has travelled around the province, including a show in Vancouver during the Olympics. The grant will allow for an expanded catalogue in Parksville showing the 860 pieces of artwork from the 340 artists located in 41 countries, and a website including a scanned copy of each piece.

The Mail Art Network has been flourishing around the world since the 1960s, said curator and organizer of the exhibition Ed Varney, and continues to thrive today. The network involves people from all over the world exchanging art work through the postal system. It began as an early form of social networking, a fun way to meet other artists, but for others it was much more serious.

Read the full article here.

This program awards project assistance grants to Canadian, non-profit organizations and collectives with a primary mandate in the contemporary visual arts. Grants provide a contribution toward projects that bring together professional artists and the broader community for the purpose of giving the visual arts a stronger presence in everyday life. Artists and community collaboration is an arts process that actively involves the work of professional artists and non-arts community members in creative and collaborative relationships.

Eligibility

Eligible Applicants

This program is not open to individual artists. Applicants must be one of the following types:

• Incorporated, non-profit Canadian arts organizations with a primary mandate in the visual arts. Included are fine craft organizations, museums, public art galleries, exhibition centres, artist-run centres, university art departments, art colleges, fine craft colleges, service organizations and professional associations.
• Professional artists’ collectives or curatorial collectives (for the definition of an eligible collective, see the following Frequently Asked Questions section). Note that collectives must submit their application in the name of their collective or project, and must be able to receive a grant payable to that name.

This Canada Council for the Arts program is accessible to Aboriginal arts organizations and arts organizations of diverse cultural and regional communities of Canada.

Eligible Projects

Grants contribute to the direct costs of the collaborative production of artworks or similar activities whereby members of the non-arts community are given direct access to artists’ working processes. All projects supported by the Visual Arts Section of the Canada Council must pay professional fees to participating artists, including exhibition rights, public presentation rights and reproduction rights for the use of works. These fees must be the same as, or higher than, the national standard.

Ineligible Projects

The following types of projects are not eligible for funding from this program:

• capital projects (such as the renovation of a building)
• collaborative projects involving only professional artists
• fundraising events
• programs that are part of a grade school, college or university program, and
• activities that appear in any other current grant request to the Canada Council.

Other Restrictions

• Artists who participate in projects, including artists from outside Canada, must meet the Canada Council’s definition of a professional artist (see the attached Frequently Asked Questions section).
• Applicants that have not submitted all final reports and/or financial accounting from previous Canada Council grants are not eligible to apply.
• If an applicant has submitted a grant request to this program already, and the request was unsuccessful, the same request may be resubmitted to only one further competition of this program.
• The Canada Council will accept up to two separate requests from an applicant per competition.

Grant Amount

Grants awarded through this program will be a maximum of 75 percent of the total cost of a project. Successful applicants may receive less than the amount that they request. Note that recent grants for project assistance have rarely been greater than $15,000. Retroactive funding is not available. Grant funds may be used only for project expenses that occur after the competition deadline.

Application form and guidelines

Artists and Community Collaboration Program for Visual Arts (Acrobat Adobe format that can be printed only)

OR

To apply for a grant online go to GO! Grants Online

Further Information

François Dion
Visual Arts Section
Canada Council for the Arts
350 Albert Street, P.O. Box 1047
Ottawa ON K1P 5V8

Telephone: 1-800-263-5588 (toll-free) or 613-566-4414, ext. 5268
TTY: 1-866-585-5559 | Fax: 613-566-4332

John Vaillant’s real-life thriller about a man-eating Siberian tiger has won Canada’s richest prize for non-fiction. The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival was named the winner of British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction on Monday. The prize is worth $40,000.

Read the complete article here.

New and long-term immigrants, Aboriginal people and pioneers – people from all walks of life and every region of B.C. – you opened up to share your personal stories and insights related to multiculturalism. The result is a series of portraits at once heartwarming and thought provoking, entertaining and informative.

Just a few of the people profiled are:

• Rudy Rozsypalek, a glider pilot in Pemberton B.C. who escaped communist Czechoslovakia in 1989
• Theresa Gladue, the first ever Aboriginal woman councilor in Dawson Creek, B.C.
• Sam and Phung Lam, a Burns Lake couple who came to Canada 35 years ago after being expelled from their homeland Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge

Visit www.bcpeople.ca to meet these and other British Columbians and to view or download the multimedia tools, including:

• 35 podcast interviews in a combination of audio, slide show and video formats.
• A 130+ page full colour book containing stunning imagery, testimonials and historical and anecdotal information about diversity in B.C.
• A 5-minute multimedia trailer, set to original music, with highlights of the project.
• A DVD containing the above tools and including an enhanced, interactive version of the book can be ordered while quantities last.

BC People was produced by a team of creative professionals led by Julie Gordon & Associates. The project was made possible through funding from the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia, under an initiative called Embrace BC.

The generous donation is part of an annual charity initiative, Karo Kaus, run by branding agency, Karo Group. To date, Karo has awarded $400,000 of brand strategy and multidisciplinary creative services to deserving charities in Vancouver and Calgary, each charity receiving a $50,000 brand makeover.

“Public Dreams Society really stood out as it has been an integral part of the Vancouver cultural scene since 1985 and has awed and inspired tens of thousands of people with its spirited public art,” says Anne Farrer, vice president and managing director of Karo Group Vancouver. “Karo Kaus is about making a difference in local communities. We want to help Public Dreams reach its full potential and touch many more Vancouverites through art in the years to come.”

“We are thrilled to win this brand makeover,” says Laura Grieco, managing director of Public Dreams Society. “People donʼt always realize that Public Dreams is behind some of Vancouverʼs largest interactive arts events like Illuminares Lantern Procession, which attracts up to 25,000 artists and attendees, Parade of Lost Souls and the upcoming LunarFest. Itʼs wonderful to have Karo onboard to help us raise our public profile and create more opportunities for our talented community.”

Public Dreams Society is the fourth recipient of Vancouver Karo Kaus. Past winners include Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) where Karo was able to help them and boost ticket revenue by an unprecedented 40 per cent in 2010 and secure their first-ever season sponsor for 2011.

“I believe wholeheartedly that the re-branding we received from Karo played a major part in our success,” says James Cronk, managing producer for TUTS. “Our new brand has raised our organization to a new level and continues to be commented on by our patrons, sponsors and volunteers.”

For more information about Public Dreams, visit www.publicdreams.org.

Click here for more information.