Grants for Individuals & Collectives: Stream 3 Fall 2023

Stream 3 of the Individuals & Collectives program supports artistic projects that are materially ready for production and/​or presentation, or projects that involve individual and/​or collective creation leading directly to production and/​or presentation. Applicants may request up to $25,000 based on the anticipated costs of the project, including artist subsistence. 

Sixty-six (66) artists are recommended for the Fall 2023 Individuals & Collectives Stream 3 grant, for a total of $1,348,381.

Read on to learn about the successful applicants from the Fall 2023 intake:

• Abøn will record a full-length album of 10 songs titled Wings.
• Alida Kendell will create a half-length contemporary dance solo in collaboration with Sasha Kleinplatz to be presented by Brian Webb Dance Company in 2025.
• Allison Balcetis of the group UltraViolet (along with members Roger Admiral, Chenoa Anderson and Mark Segger) will commission two new compositions by Edmonton composers Mari Alice Conrad and Mark Segger, to be premiered in Spring 2025.
• Amena Shehab will commence the first production of a new full-length play After the Trojan Women, exploring women’s experience of war and migration, with a diverse all-female cast of nine actors.
• Andrew Ritchie will share his new play exploring urban bicycling, the politics of active transportation in Canada, and asks who has a right to the city? Inspired by his lifelong experience on a bike.
• Ania Telfer​’s project ​“Outside the Frame” involves a collective of dancers and a painter collaborating to produce a performance integrating paint, dance and found sound at Mile Zero Dance.
• Ann Vriend and the band AV & the Inner City will follow up their successful first Western Canadian festival run and receiving an Emerging Artist award by working toward creating, recording, and marketing their first body of work.
• Ashleigh Hicks will present the première production of their new play, Brick Shithouse, in Edmonton with Found Festival, July 2024 in culmination of the festival’s artist-in-residence program.
• Astrid Blodgett will promote This is How You Start to Disappear, her collection of short fiction published in 2023 by UAlberta Press, through confirmed readings in three cities.
• Becca Taylor will receive mentorship from KC Adams in Indigenous pottery techniques, build relationships with the materials and interpret them within her own art practice.
• Blake McWilliam will write, direct, produce, and edit a feature film that intricately weaves personal struggle and eco-grief with the increasingly complex challenges facing humanity.
• Braden Mole will work with mentor Jacalyn Den Haan to undergo a final professional edit of his book and get it ready, so that it can be given strong consideration for publication.
• Brin Steeves will create a large collection of ceramic vases, accompanied by a body of writing. Once finished she’ll curate and host immersive art shows in Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta.
• Camryn Carnell will conduct studio research at Casa in Lethbridge using textile and soft sculpture as a vehicle to investigate playground architecture. Next, she will document her work, create a website, and put together an exhibition proposal package.
• Carissa Halton will create and complete the first draft of a 90,000-word historical novel titled A Newspaper Woman’s Guide to Uncertain Times.
• Carley Okamura will hold a multidisciplinary stage production of Asian Canadian artists focused on community topics. This year’s theme is ​“Enough” and will include mental health, internalized racism, and stereotypes.
• Chase Kantor will produce a 100-page graphic novel in full color titled ISS about a scientist on the autistic spectrum coming to terms with his recent diagnosis in the midst of a global catastrophe.
• Clint Frazier of Home Front will record their second full-length album in 2024.
• clinton wilson will develop and produce a body of photography, sculpture and text that reflects upon global species loss.
• Colette Bachand Art and collective member Tyson Boyce will interview and invest in artists who created murals in/​around Whyte Avenue, in order to amplify artistic impact. The research project will examine how murals impact the community socially, financially and emotionally.
• Crystle Lightning; LightningCloud will work on the production, recording, mixing and mastering of an LP album featuring the music of the hit production, Bear Grease, with an Indigenous cast and storyline.
• Cui Jinzhe, aka Qiushi, will create three experimental screen installation works and develop her personal style of contemporary screen art based on traditional Chinese screen art. The aim to integrate the artistic languages of Chinese ink painting, experimental calligraphy, and mirror installation to explore the relations between pictorial images, space, and functionality.
• Daniel Madden will create a documentary project that seeks to answer a question that he is often asked, ​“What is the Edmonton creative scene like for Black creatives?”
• Darren W Jordan of 5 Artists 1 Love will welcome audiences to join them for a vibrant celebration of Edmonton’s African Canadian community, where art, music, theater, dance, poetry, and storytelling converge in an open love letter to the audience.
• Darrin Hagen will create a series of video montages set to original electronic music, featuring images and underground Queer poster art from the legendary Flashback nightclub, celebrating its 50^th anniversary.
• Dom along with fellow band members of Melafrique will record their debut album, So It Begins, an eight-track multi-genre album that showcases the diversity of the Afro-fusion band and the Edmonton arts community through instrumentation, lyrics, and vocal arrangements.
• Don Hill will create a gallery installation and online exhibit recrafting the cacophony of LRT construction in the city; a symphony of industrial noise conducted by user-gestures and yoga-like ​“held positions.”
• Eden Munro will complete the post-production and administration for a feature-length documentary about Edmonton alt-country band Jr. Gone Wild.
• Erik Richards along with his collective members will present Brother Rat, a new play by Erik Richards, at Fringe Theatre as a part of their Spotlight Series in November 2024.
• Even Gilchrist of the Donkey Dog Theatre collective will hold a script development workshop and production development workshop to refine and stage a tour-ready version of Re:Construct that is able to be performed in either English or French theatres.
• Fahad Suleiman will create a documentary exploring the history of Caribbean art and culture in Edmonton as well as the history of carnival.
• Garth Prince will write, arrange and record African-inspired celebration songs for a new album.
• Gomathi Boorada will present the dance production Dvaita- Duality at the Bali Arts Festival in July 2024 on the Invitation from Prestigious ” Indonesian Institute of Arts”.
• Jacqueline Baker will write the novel, The Sleepers, in which a young woman travels to Venice in search of a missing friend and is drawn into an underworld of corruption and human trafficking.
• Jerrold Dubyk will travel to Havana, Cuba with the Jerrold Dubyk Quartet to perform at the Jazz Plaza International Festival in January 2024.
• Jim Guedo present the independent theatre production of Brenden Jacobs-Jenkins’ play Everybody.
• Joe Nolan will record Love In The New World, his eighth studio album; with producer Tyler Chester at The Audio Department in Edmonton in January 2024.

• Katherine Abbass will explore the impact of women’s labour (mental, physical, emotional) on personal identity and community through a collection of short hybrid and experimental prose pieces.
• Kelin Flanagan and collective member Spencer Taubner will create a full-length indie-folk album that tells stories of their lives in a hundred-year-old house in the Garneau neighbourhood of Edmonton, and centres around the concept of home.
• KJ MacAlister will work with illustrator Stephanie Simpson to create Little Otter: Ugh! A Mess!, a children’s book that follows Little Otter as she navigates the emotional ups and downs of ceramics.
• Lebo Disele and her collective members will complete the pre-production of Ogboingba tries to change her fate, a theatrical adaptation of a folktale about a woman who confronts the creator to change her fate.
• Liam Faucher will record, mix, and master a full-length album by Edmonton band Good Rumour. The band will produce the twelve original songs at Edmonton’s Royal Studio throughout 2024.
• Lianna Makuch will develop and workshop a play for family audiences titled Kohkom’s Babushka: A Magical Métis/​Ukrainian Tale, adapted from the book by Marion Mutala.
• Maria Dunn will create a professional studio recording of 10 new songs. This new collection continues Maria’s work sharing the stories of real people.
• Maria Wozniak will celebrate fashion and textile art in Edmonton by presenting a curated fashion show, exercising a curatorial and independent artistic voice to foster community and cultural enrichment.
• Martin Kerr will record an EP of six new songs, to be released in spring 2024. The album will be recorded and mixed in Nashville with producer Ben Cramer, and the songs will explore themes of grief, finding hope in dark times, the beauty of nature, and the seasons of love and life.
• Marynia Fekecz-Mangan will commission a new dance work for six women, including community workshops and presentation in Spring 2025, choreographed by an international dance artist.
• Matthew Howatt and the Windrose Trio will perform a concert featuring the Sextet for Winds and Piano by Joseph Rheinberger balanced with music of today by a diverse assortment of composers.
• Matthew Satchwill will create a digitally animated short film titled Breakdown Beach, set in a parched world where a group of skeleton friends embark on a quest to find the prophesied ​“last beach on the map”.
• Mehdi Rezania will compose, record and release 50 minutes of music for solo santur.
• Myrna Kostash will travel to St Peter’s College in Muenster, SK, as an invited Series reader in February 2024, and will engage with students while leading an English literature class in writing nonfiction.
• Next Generation will work with mentor Stennie Noël will create a King costume titled ​“Sunset of Freedom” that will allow the viewer to be visually taken to the Guyanese J’ouvert funfair but within the streets of Edmonton’s festival culture.
• Olivia Street and the band King of Foxes will create a new full-length album co-produced with Edmonton-based producer and engineer, Stew Kirkwood.
• Rellik will produce, record and begin marketing his fifth full-length studio album which consists of 11 songs.
• Riisa Gundesen will create 12 new paintings for two confirmed upcoming exhibitions. These paintings will expand on a series that started in 2020, for which Riisa received an EAC Creator’s Reserve Grant.
• Rubim de Toledo will lead the Alberta-based ensemble Montuno West as they record a new full-length album of Latin-jazz music.
• Ruth DyckFehderau will mount an in-person reading, signing, Q&A (with a separate online follow- up) in Victoria for her recently released novel I (Athena).
• Samara Von Rad will create and film an aerial act with the intent to submit to the Circus International Film Festival, and other festivals.
• Sammy Volkov will record his fully written album of original material in Edmonton employing a diverse roster of Edmonton talent. This is the much-anticipated follow-up to his highly successful debut.
• Scot Morison and writing partner Lorna Schultz Nicholson work on a feature-length drama about the inspiring story of Joey Moss.
• Scott Portingale will produce the development and principal photography for an animated visual poem on life, purpose, and death.
• Steven Teeuwsen will curate an exhibition of kinetic sculptures by contemporary artists and designers to be presented outdoors at the Lowlands Project Space.
• Tim Bowling will write a 90,000-word draft for submission to publishers of a fantasy/​realist novel exploring animal-human transformation and the precarious and intimate relationship between species.
• Tzadeka will complete the post-production of a live Tzadeka and the Murder Hornettes album, recorded at the Iconic Yardbird Suite.
• Yong Fei Guan will collaborate with the City of Edmonton Archives to document the multi-year participatory art research on Edmonton gojis.
• Zach Polis will produce a poetry manuscript called It’s Okay to Cry Everything Holy, exploring themes of grief, the supernatural, the subconscious mind, and all the permutations and driving forces of escapism.

Learn more about Stream 1 and Stream 2 recipients from the fall cycle on the blog.