Niriqatiginnga’s artists-in-residence program was initiated by @1860 Winnipeg Arts Collective artists and Jamie Bell and Tony Eetak as part of a Canada Council Digital Greenhouse project in 2021-2022. This experimental pilot continued with support from the Manitoba Arts Council Indigenous 360 Program in 2022 and 2023. It has grown into the heart of our Winnipeg, Manitoba-based programming today.
With support from Agri-Food and Agriculture Canada, and the Government of Canada’s Youth Employment and Skills program, and building on preliminary research supported by the Manitoba Agriculture Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership youth like emerging Inuit youth artist Tony Eetak will be able to explore career development at the intersections of arts, food security and organizational development.
This new and experimental curated program will provide invited local, regional and international artists with the opportunity to pursue new developments in their practices and to produce new work. It focuses on artists working across music, media, time-based visual art, performance, and literature. While in residence, artists are supported with a fee, production budget, and curatorial and technical expertise, and are hosted by Niriqatiginnga or at off-site on locations with our collaborating partners, as possible. The number of residencies, their structures and duration will be adapted to each individual artist and project.
Many projects produced through our programs are done so in collaboration with partner institutions in Canada and internationally. We also offer audiences opportunities to engage with residents and their work at various stages of a project’s development and presentation. In May 2024, the program was funded by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s Indigenous Intellectual Property Protection program, as well as being accepted to the OpenAI Researcher Access Program and will explore the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for arts and food sector sector organizational capacity building.
Over the next few months, as we transition from being a small, upstart arts collective, we will be re-vamping and transforming our platforms. This will see a lot of links change, but the content will still be here! While our new digital archive is being prepared, you can search past projects on the Niriqatiginnga Arts website here.
