canada
This is a list of some interesting community art organizations and projects across Canada. There are many more that will be added over time … If you would like to add an organization to this list, please email Inspire Art at: info@inspireart.org
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ONTARIO:
Artscape is a not-for-profit, urban development organization that revitalizes buildings, neighbourhoods, and cities through the arts. Artscape projects provide affordable space for creativity while generating positive cultural, economic, social, and environmental impact.
Art Starts is an arts-based community development organization operating in the City of Toronto. Our mandate is to build healthier communities using the arts. At Art Starts we understand that the arts are a medium for engaging residents, creating a shared sense of identity, identifying challenges and collectively working to overcome them.
Community Arts Ontario serves as the province’s only multidisciplinary, cross-sectional arts network. We provide an effective voice for all individuals, groups and institutions that share our common vision for the arts. Together, we aim to achieve a standard of arts excellence within all regions of Ontario and beyond. As such, we offer unique programs and services to suit a broad range of arts and cultural professionals, community leaders and municipalities.
De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group
De-ba-jeh-mu-jig (“Storytellers” in Cree & Ojibway) Theatre Group is a professional community based non-profit organization dedicated to the vitalization of the Anishnaabeg Culture, Language and Heritage, through education and the sharing of original creative expression with Native and Non-Native people.
Jumblies promotes art that is woven into life’s details, is accessible to all, fosters exploration and excellence, and supports artists of all backgrounds and traditions; and in community that is open-ended and based on people doing something together. Jumblies dismantles boundaries and unites disparate elements. We say, “Everyone is welcome”, and grapple with the artistic and social implications of meaning it.
We undertake multi-year residencies, moving through phases of research and development, creation, production, and legacy. We discover and transform stories and images; collaborate across disciplines and traditions; bring together people of assorted ages, cultures, abilities and economic levels; employ and mentor established, emerging and newcomer artists; produce new works of art; and create lasting relationships with people and places.
Manifesto Festival : Community Projects
Manifesto is more than just a festival. Everything we do is geared towards fulfilling our mandates and the desires identified through community engagement and feedback, using a multi-disciplinary approach including arts and music workshops, professional development programs, art exhibitions, filmmaking, concerts… whatever’s clever
The Remix Project is a youth program that acts as an arts and cultural incubator in Toronto, Canada, North America’s cultural capital. Young people aspiring to start careers in the urban arts sector drive the program by developing personal six month plans for success.
Sketch creates art making opportunities for young people who live street-involved and homeless or who are considered to be at risk.
URBANARTS initiates arts activities that bring people together in central-west Toronto and city wide. One of four community arts councils across Toronto, URBANARTS is an incubator for local arts, with a range of programs led by professional artists in visual art, theatre, dance and music.
MANITOBA:
Crossing Communities Art Project
The Crossing Communities Art Project is dedicated to art productions that increase the capacity of women and youth to express themselves through the arts. Crossing Communities is a community-site art project that provides art mentorship to criminalized women and youth through studios and workshops, with the goal of employing visual expression to reduce self-harm, heal from trauma and reduce violence.
SASKATCHEWAN:
The Common Weal Community Arts
Common Weal Community Arts is a provincial arts organization that links professional artists with communities to promote cultural identity and social justice through collaboration and creative expression. Common Weal links artists and communities to animate long-term positive and social change.
We strive to inspire ideas for social change through art. By linking professional artists with communities to engage in collaborative art projects, we empower people – and their communities – to tell their stories in their own voices.
Sâkêwêwak Artists’ Collective –
Our name, Sâkêwêwak, is a Cree word meaning “they are coming into view” or “they are coming out of hiding” and was chosen to reflect our community’s vision for an organization that would facilitate the emergence of new artistic practices.
BRITISH COLOMBIA:
Community Arts Council of Vancouver
Creating community with art
Currently many Canadian artists are working with communities in exciting and fully engaged ways that situate the artist’s practice in both the processes and the products which are created. These are very difficult practices to explain and document, therefore there is a lack of materials that convey the nature of the work.
Video has a particular potential for documenting community based arts practises as time is an integral element of both forms. The Documenting Engagement Institute supports all artists working in community-based practices by helping both specific sectors, (such as grant-makers and educational institutions), and the broader public to become aware of and understand what this work is about and why it is so important .
Fearless is a community arts initiative that prioritizes an inclusive process and involvement of people in media making. Context is central; this media is situated in more public, accessible and resonant places,
geared to a specific audience and a specific time. Fearless is reflective of and responsive to the DTES community.check out also: DTES community arts network
Redwire is a media and arts organization dedicated to Native youth expression.
Redwire’s mandate is to provide Native youth with an uncensored forum for discussion, in order to help youth find their own voice. Redwire is by, for and about Native youth; all content, editorial decisions and associated media projects are initiated and led by youth, inspiring creativity, motivation and action.
” Through Our Eyes” is a photo documentary program taught and coordinated by a professional photographer, Christine Germano. The objective of this project is to create a legend of a community told through the hearts and eyes of their youth.
The intent is to utilize the media in a positive way. The exhibit gives the community an opportunity to celebrate the student’s creative achievements so they may continue to seek similar artistic opportunities through out their lives.
