Photo: Ethan Tassiuk, and Tony Eetak head to campus at the University of Winnipeg. The pair were co-facilitating a roundtable discussion on the use of arts in support of inclusive and participatory learning environments at the University of Winnipeg June 21, 2022.
The special session was held during Auviqsaqtut, the 2022 Inuit Studies Conference held in Winnipeg, June 19-22, 2022 and was the final component of the design phase for our digital arts and cultural entrepreneurship incubator project.
For many of our group, this was the first time to be presenting and exhibiting in both arts and academic environments, as our own, independent initiative. It was a very special moment for all of us to see everyone coming together after more than six months of hard work, and after overcoming the many delays, obstacles and other challenges. It was not easy for our project, and we’re immensely proud to have made it this far.
In the coming months, our project will be consolidating its efforts and updating what we have been able to achieve this year to deliver a second iteration in the form of a Winter program. Like these past six months, we will continue to build up our capacity. Several of our students graduated this week, and are applying to college and university and the hybrid in-person and virtual approaches we’ve been using have proven to work well for us.
This project contributed to building stronger Canada-US relations through the arts. We are very excited to have our teams interested in taking all of this work further, and using these experiences to continue new ways to support arts entrepreneurship through digital tools and technologies. A key goal moving forward for our incubator project is to deepen the relationships between Minneapolis and Winnipeg. Both cities have a lot of similarities and a lot of history. We hope to see more opportunities for our artists to learn by doing more activities with the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
This project created short-term employment for both professional and emerging artists at a time where many in the arts sector have not been able to advance their craft. Many events were cancelled at the beginning of our project and we had to be constantly adapting. From this experience we were able to design and test some new approaches, new topics that we have not studied before and to see if our model for an incubator would actually work.
We believe it did.
Through these experiences we were able to incubate real, hands-on learning and career exploration. That’s perhaps the most important component of our entire project. Most all of our youth who took part have been disconnected from their peers, normal school experiences. This project helped bridge some of the digital gaps we knew were an issue before the pandemic, but grew even wider during the pandemic.
We’re especially grateful to our collaborators who were able to join us for our final round of workshops and sessions: Eriel Lugt, Chase Nogasak, Ethan Tassiuk, Tony Eetak, Ethan Caners, Maeva Gauthier, Jaro Malinowski, Constance Menzies, Tara Baswani, Remi Lemieux, Dr. Olaf Kuhlke, Luke Suluk, Kendyce Cockney, Tootoo Fotheringham for being part of these valuable conversations and learning experiences. We’re also very thankful to our supporters from ArcticNet, the Carving Out Climate Testimony researchers, Lembas Works, the Arctic Buying Company, Chocolatier Constance Popp, M&C Consulting, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Qaumajuq and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Most importantly, we are grateful for the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for believing that our project was worth supporting, and for investing in our small, but growing collective.
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