Latest Winter Short Stories
A False Spring
by Eva SulukA deceptive January warmth blankets a remote Ontario research cabin, the air thick with the smell of melting snow, damp earth, and pine. The beauty of the unseasonable thaw masks the imminent arrival of a global catastrophe.
For The Content
by Jamie F. BellThe chaotic noise of a city protest—shouts, sirens, and the low hum of a crowd—is filtered through the lens of a phone. The air is cold, smelling of exhaust fumes and street food. The atmosphere is tense, but for one person, it's just a backdrop for her next viral video.
The Cold Truth
by Winter City StoriesA drafty, freezing cedar cabin interior where the only light comes from the dying, orange-red glow of the stone fireplace.
The Testimony of Whisperwood
by Jamie F. BellIn the heart of a biting winter, a small town's courthouse becomes a stage for a legal battle between corporate modernity and the ancient, whimsical soul of a forest. Snow falls relentlessly, muffling the world and serving as both backdrop and evidence.
Blueprints
by Winter City StoriesA wind-scoured chasm between brick buildings where trash gathers and the temperature drops ten degrees.
The Stillness Protocol
by Jamie F. BellThe vast, glaring whiteness of a frozen lake in Northwestern Ontario. The air is so cold it feels solid. A profound silence is intermittently broken by the whine of wind and the desperate monologue of a man live-streaming his own redemption.
Winter City Stories
This project emerged from community-based storytelling, interdisciplinary arts practice, and digital experimentation in Northwestern Ontario and urban Manitoba Canada. Coffee shops, waiting rooms, garages, and small towns appear often, reflecting the spaces where stories are lived and created through Winter City Stories.
Welcome to our collection of experimental story outputs from the Winter City Stories project. In this short video, with music composed by youth artist Tony Eetak we showcase some of the stories and outputs. Youth learned to develop AI tools to support storytelling, publishing, automation and digital literacy. Coffee and cafe settings are present in many of the almost 7 million words of short story experiments in the program's datasets.
An experimental project for participatory research, storytelling, interdisciplinary arts and digital literacy.
The project was made possible with funding and support from the Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects program and the Government of Ontario. We thank them for supporting northern arts, skills development and applied AI research for innovation in Ontario.