Department of Canadian Heritage

• TORONTO, March 8, 2024 /CNW/ - The Canadian Women's Foundation has announced the winners of their first ever Feminist Creator Prize .
• The Feminist Creator Prize , the only award of its kind in Canada, acknowledges, encourages, and supports diverse feminist creators who bolster feminist voices and challenge pervasive gendered digital hate and abuse.
• Learn more about the Feminist Creator Prize and gendered digital hate, harassment, and violence in Canada .
• The Canadian Women's Foundation's Feminist Creator Prize is sponsored by The Philanthropist Journal, Citizen Relations, and Brown & Cohen Communications & Public Affairs Inc. and supported by Elevate Festival.

• As reports of military machinations and diplomatic efforts have gained attention, the art world has struggled with responses to the horrors of this war.
• For example, controversy and calls for transparency and accountability followed the departure of Anishinaabe-kwe curator Wanda Nanibush from the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).
• After the Royal Ontario Museum tried to change a Palestinian American artist’s work, Jenin Yaseen staged a sit-in and others protested.

Endeavouring to speak truthfully, meaningfully

• Rights, limits, regulation and the purpose of artists’ work are what is at stake in this discussion.
• An investigation is underway to see how the gallery’s policies may have impacted the board’s decision-making.

People trying to create and speak truth

• Some might suggest that artists should entertain and enlighten us but stay away from contentious issues.
• I believe artists have a unique role, different than that of journalists, political leaders or even documentary filmmakers.

Art and our lives

• Thinking about “art worlds” as “patterns of collective activity,” as Becker does, helps us to think about art in relationship to our social and political lives, and the conditions under which artists create.
• Art schools, professional organizations, galleries and performance spaces all play a part in enabling some artists and their messages to shine, whether through financial support, attention or time — while constraining or even silencing others.

• At the same time, they prescribe behaviours and actions that constrain both artists and the public perception of their work.
• In this way, the support systems around artistic work have political implications, just as much as the art itself may have.

Discipline via funding

• As I examined in my doctoral research, the Summerworks Theatre Festival briefly lost funding from Canadian Heritage in 2011 after staging playwright Catherine Frid’s controversial play Homegrown.
• This was after a high-profile 2006 RCMP investigation saw 18 Muslim individuals accused of terrorism.
• (Charges against seven people were stayed or dropped, while four people were convicted).

What do we want from our artists?

• People around the world face what some scholars and activists have called a “polycrisis.” Artists represent and reflect this social and political upheaval.
• Theatres across the world stage performances or screenings — like The Gaza Monologues — to try to represent Palestinian voices.
• And we should be mindful of desires to discipline the art world at a time when its voices are so deeply needed.

Lowell Gasoi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• GATINEAU, QC, Nov. 14, 2023 /CNW/ - Today, the Honourable Pascale St-Onge, Minister of Canadian Heritage, announced the appointment of Stéphanie Paquette as Regional Commissioner for Quebec at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for a five-year term, effective November 23, 2023.
• This appointment is the result of the Government of Canada's open, transparent and merit-based selection process for Governor in Council appointments.
• Stéphanie Paquette's appointment as the CRTC's Quebec Regional Commissioner will ensure the Commission has all the different expertise and perspectives it needs at the table.
• As they become available, all appointment opportunities within the 16 organizations in the Canadian Heritage Portfolio are posted on the Governor in Council appointments website.

• Nia Centre offers a critical space to gather, experience, and promote Black arts, culture, and artists in Canada.
• TORONTO, Nov. 2, 2023 /CNW/ - Nia Centre for the Arts today proudly unveils Canada's first professional multidisciplinary Black arts facility, located in the heart of the historic community of Toronto's Little Jamaica.
• The venue champions a diverse range of arts, from music and literature to visual arts and theatre, often in collaboration with emerging artists and arts organizations.
• Let's celebrate this groundbreaking professional arts centre dedicated to showcasing, nurturing and promoting the work of artists from across the African diaspora."