Images clockwise from left: Luminato Festival’s incoming artistic director Josephine Ridge. Photo: Prudence Upton; Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, Challenge for Change/Société Nouvelle: Documents in Participatory Democracy, 2014; imagineNATIVE executive director, Jason Ryle, and community sponsorships, Audrey Rochette. with Emma Donoghue at the Golden Box Office Awards.
Our editors’ weekly roundup of Canadian art news.
The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival received a $20,000 donation from Oscar-nominated screenwriter and novelist Emma Donoghue. Donoghue’s contribution is the largest single donation in the organization’s history, and will be dedicated towards “the organization’s annual Festival and year-round initiatives, with a focus on mentorships and professional development programmes.” The 2016 festival will begin in October 2016.
Australian arts administrator Josephine Ridge has been appointed artistic director of the Luminato Festival in Toronto. Ridge recently helmed the Melbourne Festival, a multi-disciplinary art festival, for three years, and before that worked at the Sydney Festival and the Australian Ballet. Ridge will assume the artistic-director position this summer, taking over from Jorn Weisbrodt, who programmed the 2016 edition.
Montreal-born, Stockholm-based artist Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen has been awarded a production grant from the Sharjah Art Foundation, which is dedicated to cultural development in the Gulf region. The grants assist artists with “resources and a platform for experimentation and the production of ambitious new projects.” Hoang Nguyen and 10 other international artists were selected as recipients from a pool of 200 applicants.
The City of Vancouver has established a new small-grants program to support emerging artists who are working with youths aged five to 18 in an art context. The grants will fund projects of up to $1,000, and the first two rounds of deadlines will be in April and August 2016. Although funded by the City of Vancouver, the grants will be disbursed by the not-for-profit organization ArtStarts in Schools.
