19 B.C. organizations receive $800,000 to create artistic and cultural
legacies

VANCOUVER, Aug. 10 /CNW/ - A Victoria concert series inspired by B.C. artist Emily Carr, a play comparing privilege and deep economic disparities from the 19^th century to today, and a hip-hop musical theatre exploring the lure of gang culture on young adults are just three of the diverse artistic works funded by Arts Partners in Creative Development (APCD).

This year, 19 projects will receive a total of $800,000 in funding from APCD. Initiated as a three-year funding program to assist B.C. organizations in creating world-class artistic work, this is the fifth and final round of funding for APCD.

"As a company dedicated to the creation of new performance works, APCD offered us the time and resources to follow the inspiration of this project practically without limits," said Jay Dodge, artistic producer of Boca del Lupo Theatre Society, which received funding in 2008 and 2010 to commission and produce PHOTOG: An Imaginary Look at the Uncompromising Life of Thomas Smith. "We've drawn on the expertise of world-renowned war photographers, psychologists and involved many of Vancouver's most dynamic artists. APCD also acted as a catalyst for new partnerships, including one with World Stage at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto where the show will premiere."

Since launching in March 2007, APCD has invested $6.2 million in 84 B.C.-based organizations to support the creation of original works that will leave extraordinary legacies for B.C. arts and cultural communities, within the province and across the country.

Recognizing that arts and culture are an important part of our province - encouraging community engagement, promoting diversity and stimulating economic growth - the six partners came together to streamline support for innovative new projects. APCD is funded by the Province of British Columbia, Canada Council for the Arts, City of Vancouver, Vancouver Foundation, Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) and 2010 Legacies Now.

APCD supports B.C. organizations in creating and developing original works in the performing and studio arts. These projects represent the many cultures of B.C. Some will reach audiences locally, while others will be presented across Canada and abroad.

Our multimedia Media Centre provides full project descriptions of current and past recipients, a list of advisory panel members and information on Arts Partners in Creative Development. Also, you may review and request videos and photos from some past recipients at www.ArtsPartners.ca.

Listed below are the 19 recipients and a brief summary of their projects:

STUDIO ARTS

Malaspina Printmakers, Vancouver
Marina Roy and Abbas Akhavan will create Fire/Fire, an installation that will include an animation by Roy, sculpture and drawings by Akhavan and a collaborative artist book. Fire/Fire will draw upon socio-political history and Japanese Ukiyo-e prints. The exhibition will be co-operatively presented by Malaspina Printmakers and Centre A, and will take place at both venues.

Poetry Gabriola Society, Gabriola Island
Previously funded for the commissioning of twelve new works, Poetry Gabriola Society will premiere them at the 7th Annual Poetry Gabriola Festival: Canada Speaks Showcase. This is the second largest literary performance festival in Canada, which features 35 to 50 artists over four days, making it a significant national festival.

Presentation House Gallery operated by the BC Photography and Media Arts Society, North Vancouver
A public art work will be developed for Vancouver by visual artist Cedric Bomford and his collaborators Nathan and Jim Bomford. The work will interpret our local history and the city's evolving landscape that will be experienced for several years. The Bomford Project will be a significant development for Presentation House Gallery's public art programming.

Vancouver Access Artist Run Centre (Access Gallery), Vancouver
In a performance and video featuring local parkour practitioners Toronto-based Jon Sasaki explores overcoming near-impossible challenges in Come Down. Parkour is physical interaction with urban spaces, often overlooked by urban dwellers, using acrobatics. Sasaki proposes a collective form of parkour and a series of challenges that are metaphors for those found in society.

Vancouver Art Gallery Association, Vancouver
This project, Ken Lum: Mirror Maze with 12 Signs of Depression and House of Realization, will see two-large scale art works by Ken Lum further developed, created and then presented together with a survey exhibition of his work at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The two art works will provide the central structure for the exhibition's floor plan and will have a crucial role in the way viewers perceive Lum's catalogue as a whole.

Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Centre A), Vancouver
Internationally renowned Canadian artist Lani Maestro will be commissioned to create a sculpture and a video in a project titled No Pain Like This Body, examining the formation of urban sensitivities (how the experience of the city shapes identity). The works will be presented in a publication, and at exhibitions at Centre A in Vancouver and at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg. The exhibition will include a video and text written by the artist, which will be projected onto an exterior window and seen by thousands of passersby.

PERFORMING ARTS

Boca del Lupo Theatre Society, Vancouver
Supported previously for the commissioning of this work, Boca del Lupo will present the world premiere of PHOTOG: An Imaginary look at the Uncompromising Life of Thomas Smith at World Stage, Harbourfront Centre in Toronto in the fall of 2010 and at a Vancouver premiere in 2011. The work is a multi-media performance piece about seeing the world through the eyes of a conflict photographer based on interviews with four of the world's top photojournalists.

Chop Theatre Society, Vancouver
How to Disappear Completely is a one-man show tracing Itai Erdal's journey to understand his mother Mery's approach to death. Video will be a large component of the shows, enabling the audience to gain access to Mery Erdal, and to see her body and mind's descent into illness. This performance will capture her vibrant personality, the strong bond she had with her son and how she faced her imminent death.

First Pacific Theatre Society, Vancouver
First Pacific Theatre will commission and develop Father Daughter Reunion (working title), a play based on events that took place in 1965 when a Quaker named Norman Morrison set himself on fire at the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. The historic event acts as a springboard for contemporary questions on martyrdom, faith and conscience.

Green Thumb Theatre, Vancouver
Sick Daze explores the rise of gang identity as cool, using a contemporary hip-hop musical theatre style. Green Thumb Theatre, in collaboration with playwright Michael Northey and Vancouver hip-hop artist Kyprios, will create and develop a full-length musical featuring three friends who come together over a love of music and spoken word. When one of them begins to move toward gangster rap both in style and persona, rising tensions lead to problems and tragedy.

Karen Jamieson Dance Society, Vancouver
Collision, part of Dancing on the Edge Festival 2011, is interdisciplinary and site-specific to the Roundhouse Community Centre. It brings together professional contemporary dancers, multicultural/multigenerational community dancers and a team of award-winning artists. The work explores the collision of cultures such as the different relationships that European/Asian immigrants and the First Nations had to the railway (experienced at the Roundhouse).

Kelowna Ballet Society a.k.a. Ballet Kelowna, Kelowna, B.C.
Ballet Kelowna will commission award-winning Vancouver choreographer Simone Orlando and acclaimed jazz pianist and Okanagan-based composer Stu Goldberg to create a new ballet set to an original piece of music. New Works Ballet Kelowna: Original Dance and Music Commission (working title), will be the featured premiere of Ballet Kelowna's fall season and tour to more than 30 communities during the performance year.

Mortal Coil Performance Society, Richmond, B.C.
Through a highly collaborative creative process, Mortal Coil will unite designers, puppet masters, actors, stilt performers and a writer in a developmental process to create a site-specific theatre work at the Britannia Shipyards in Steveston. The Britannia Project (working title) will explore issues of immigration, ethnic conflict, labour history and memory.

musica intima society, Vancouver
Songs from the Holy Forest will be an opera written by Vancouver composer David MacIntrye for musica intima. It will draw from selected poems from The Holy Forest, written by B.C. poet Robin Blaser, and feature the spiritual journey of 12 people who are lost "in the land of magic." To keep fear away, they tell each other stories in the hope they soon will be found.

Neworld Theatre Society, Vancouver
Neworld Theatre will commission and develop James Fagan Tait's original adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, incorporating original music composed and directed by Joelysa Pankanea. The project partners include Playwrights Theatre Centre and Vancouver Moving Theatre, who will become a production partner when The Idiot is presented in the 2012 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

Pangaea Arts Society, Vancouver
Previously funded for the commissioning of this work, Pangaea will present Cumberland, a bilingual play about the Chinese coal mining community of Cumberland, B.C. in 1899 and the Cantonese opera troupes that toured the province at the time. The work will be a synthesis of Cantonese opera and western theatre and a cross-cultural collaboration with professional Cantonese opera actors, musicians and western theatre practitioners.

Radix Theatre Society, Vancouver
Babylonia is a new theatre project that explores how corporate and online cultures impact people. Andrew Templeton and Paul Ternes will create this work, which will be delivered both online and through three live, simultaneous performances in coffee shops in different British Columbia cities. The audience will experience the performance in part through live feeds - which they watch through their laptops - and through live performances in the three locations.

Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO), Vancouver
VICO will commission two groundbreaking new works: one from Dutch composer Joël Bons for the 27-member orchestra, and one from Canadian composer Dr. Stephen Chatman for the orchestra and 25-voice chamber choir (Laudate Singers). The pieces will be developed through an intensive, highly interactive workshop process. The project, Imagined Worlds: Intertwined, expands the horizons of Canadian contemporary classical music and pushes the boundaries of the developing art form of intercultural music.

Victoria Symphony Society, Victoria, B.C.
As part of the popular Odyssey series concerts, the focus for the 2011/12 season will be B.C. artist Emily Carr in a project called Emily Carr Odyssey Series. One concert will be commissioned symphonic works inspired by Carr's artworks; another will feature Veda Hille, a composer with roots in a number of musical worlds who has already written a song cycle about Carr; and one will focus on First Nations locations and people that inspired Carr. Along with the commissions and the concerts, collaborations will happen with other arts institutions, incorporating Carr's art in concerts, educational activities and other cross-promotions.

Arts Partners in Creative Development - Partner organizations

Province of B.C.
The Province of British Columbia supports arts and culture through the funding of a variety of programs and organizations, including the British Columbia Arts Council, the Arts Legacy Fund and 2010 Legacies Now. In 2008, the Province established a new $150-million BC150 Cultural Fund to support and foster creative opportunities for British Columbians across the province. Since 2001, the British Columbia Arts Council has distributed over $124 million in funding. For more information, please visit www.gov.bc.ca.

Canada Council for the Arts/Conseil des Arts du Canada
The Canada Council for the Arts is a national arms length agency created by an Act of Parliament in 1957. According to the Canada Council Act, the role of the council is "to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts." The Council offers a broad range of grants and services to professional Canadian artists and arts organizations in dance, interdisciplinary and performance art, media arts, music, theatre, visual arts, and writing and publishing. It also promotes public awareness of the arts through its communications, research and arts promotion activities.

City of Vancouver
The City works to ensure Vancouver's future as a creative city, open and accessible to artists, to the broadest range of artistic expression, and to the widest participation. The City of Vancouver's cultural goals include promoting a high level of creativity, diversity and excellence in the cultural life of Vancouver. For more information, please visit www.vancouver.ca.

Vancouver Foundation
Vancouver Foundation is Canada's largest community foundation. We work with donors across B.C. to help them become community builders. VF donors support a wide range of projects and organizations, and recognize many factors go into creating a healthy and vibrant place to live, work and play. That's why we support arts and culture. With our donors, we also identify long-term needs and opportunities, invest in sustainable solutions, and help communities become resilient, resourceful, and ready for the future they want. For more information, please visit www.vancouverfoundation.ca.

VANOC
VANOC was responsible for the planning, organizing, financing and staging of the XXI Olympic Winter Games and the X Paralympic Winter Games. The 2010 Olympic Winter Games were staged in Vancouver and Whistler February 12 to 28, 2010. Vancouver and Whistler hosted the Paralympic Winter Games March 12 to 21, 2010. Visit www.vancouver2010.com.

The Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad, presented by Bell, was a series of multidisciplinary festivals and digital programs showcasing the best in Canadian and international arts and popular culture. Launched in 2008, the program culminated in the 60-day Cultural Olympiad 2010 (January 22 to March 21, 2010), which ran before and throughout the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

2010 Legacies Now
2010 Legacies Now is the first organization of its kind that has taken an innovative approach to leveraging the 2010 Winter Games. A not-for-profit society, 2010 Legacies Now works in partnership with community organizations, non-government organizations, the private sector and all levels of government to assist communities in discovering and creating inclusive social and economic opportunities. More than two million British Columbians in 400 communities and neighbourhoods have benefited from investments made by 2010 Legacies Now, and many of its programs will endure beyond the Games. For more information, please visit www.2010LegaciesNow.com and to read about our community impact, visit 2010andBeyond.ca.

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