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HomeMy WebLinkAboutDSD-19-003 - 2019 Artist-In-ResidenceREPORT TO:Finance & CorporateServices Committee DATE OF MEETING:January 21, 2019 SUBMITTED BY:Cory Bluhm, Executive Director, Economic Development, 519-741-2200 ext.7065 PREPARED BY:Karoline Varin, Program Administrator Arts & Creative Industries, 519-741-2200 ext. 7912 WARD (S) INVOLVED:All DATE OF REPORT:December 21, 2018 REPORT NO.:DSD-19-003 SUBJECT:2019 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE APPOINTMENT ___________________________________________________________________________ RECOMMENDATION: That Mary Neil be appointed as the 2019City of Kitchener Artist-in- Residence as recommended by the Public Art Working Group and Arts and Culture Advisory Committee; and further, That the Mayor and Clerk be authorized to execute an agreement, satisfactory to the City Solicitor, with Mary Neiloutlining the obligations of the Artist-in-Residence appointment. BACKGROUND: Established in 1995 as the first municipal program of its kind, the City of Kitchener Artist in Residence program aims to engage the community in the production of contemporary art that reflects our shared identity and supports the development of local artists. The program delivers on the understanding that meaningful engagement in the arts and growth of the creative sector contributes positively to thedynamism, authenticity,and overall competitiveness of the City of Kitchener. Link: Learn more about the City of Kitchener's Artist in Residence program The annual program includes community engagement components such as workshops and events, presentations of work in progress and completed works in city hall galleries or other venues, collaboration with City events, programs and facilities, and participation on Public Art Working Group (PAWG), a subcommittee of the Arts and Culture Advisory Committee (ACAC). The Artist in Residence is provided with an honorarium for the year. Make it Kitchener identifies the expansion of the Artist in Residence Pr Since 2015, the call has been broadened to include artists working in any discipline, a shift developed in close consultation with PAWG and ACAC. Beyond visual arts, proposals can include dance, design, digital and media arts, folk and traditional arts, literature and spoken word, music, multidisciplinary works, opera, theatre, musical theatre and performing arts. The program continues to emphasize a high level of community engagement. Activities associated ***This information is available in accessible formats upon request. *** Please call 519-741-2345 or TTY 1-866-969-9994for assistance. 6 - 1 with the Artist in Residence program occur throughout the city over the course of the year. A wide variety of individuals are engaged during the programfrom those encountering artwork and the artist at community events, to those interested in workshops on artistic practice. REPORT: The annual call for proposals was advertised in the summer of 2018. Fifteenproposals were submitted by the competition close in October 2018. PAWG members assessed the entries based on: t working at a professional level collaboration and meaningful exchange with the community strategy PAWG reached consensus at their November 13, 2018meeting, selecting Mary Neil as the recommended 2019City of Kitchener Artist in Residence. Mary Neil is proposing to engagecommunities through workshops hosted at community centres where participants use commonly-found repurposed materials to build instruments. Those instruments will then be used to co-create a piece of music. Mary will not only use this approach to teach basic music-making skills, but to initiatea conversation on sustainable practices (Appendix A). The instruments created by the community will then be arranged on a mobile outdoor wall and will provide a link to the community compositions. The wall will also serve as an invitation to the communityat large,to use their own creativity to compose music, or to simply at a variety of events around the city. Mary Neil is a community musician currently completing her Masters of Artsin Community Music. Community musicians create opportunities for people to come together and make music, a process called participatory music-making. She is the founder of KW Junk Music, hosting participatory music events with musical instruments made from recycled items. s practice issituated in deeply understanding the emotion and affect of the participants, environment, politics,andlocation in order to purposefully co-design workshops for particular communities. This is a unique proposal to the residency programmany past artists have been visual artists. Mary will create an opportunity to explore a different media in an approach thatishighly accessible to all audiences, that encourages play, community building and self-expression. 6 - 2 ALIGNMENT WITH CITY OF KITCHENER STRATEGIC PLAN: the delivery of core service. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS: The $10,000 artist fee and $2,500 allocation for expenses aresupported by Arts/Creative Industry budgets. COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: INFORM council / committee meeting. COLLABORATE An important component of the Artist-in-Residence program is the requirement for meaningful public engagement. City staff works with the artist to identify interesting opportunities for public engagement and develop creative programming to suit these opportunities. Mary Neilwill engage the community at community centres and events and will partner with other organizations to deliver music making programming. Engaging advisory committees: In addition to consulting on the Artist-in-Residence call for entry, PAWG serves as the selection committee for the position, as a subcommittee of ACAC. A PAWG motion that ACAC support the selection of Mary Neil as the 2019City of Kitchener Artist-in- residence was considered and supported by ACAC on November 20, 2018. ACKNOWLEDGED BY: Justin Readman, General Manager DSD 6 - 3 CAO 2019ArtistinResidenceAppointment AppendixA: MaryNeilProposal 3pages 6 - 4 Mary Neil Artist in Residence Application Proposal Project Scope and Rationale: The field of community music is relatively young. Community Musicians are practitioners that create opportunities for people to come together and make music, a process called participatory music making. Community Musicians use these moments of participatory music-making to achieve many outcomes. For my practice, I began an organization called KW Junk Music (facebook.com/KWJunkMusic), which combines music, sustainability, and community development. The story begins by diverting items away from landfills and recycling plants and using them to create inexpensive musical instruments. By creating inexpensive instruments, music becomes accessible to everyone, which is a fundamental pillar of community music. I host junk music jams to a variety of audiences such as summer camps, neighbourhood events, senior programs, and theatre productions to name a few. In my practice, I use participatory music-making to build community, encourage people to examine their sustainable practices, and affect social change. As a Community Musician, I do not have a body of work in the traditional sense. However, I have hosted a number of events where I can demonstrate impact on community building, place-making, shifts in culture, and affecting change in sustainable practice. These events take place in a variety of settings. For example, I hosted a junk music jam in an alleyway in downtown Kitchener where participants commented that the positive and creative experience changed their negative view of the downtown core. Thus, participatory music events have the potential to change how people perceive and interact with place which can lead to community building, economic stimulation, and place-making. Another example is an event I hosted was at an Anglican church which was designed to bring together the congregation that attends on Sunday to interact in a creative, positive way with the Syrian children of refugee families who use the church mid-week for an after school program. During the event, we sang songs from all over the world in different languages including English and Arabic. The children felt so excited that everyone was singing in their mother tongue that they offered to teach a song from their country. Afterwards, members of the congregation interacted with the children, many of whom has ever been in the sanctuary of a church, and answered questions about what happens on Sunday and why the church is setup the way it is. In this particular event, participatory music created a space of welcome and mitigated the differences between communities to offer an opportunity to build down barriers and build bridges. Community Musicians are trained in facilitating participatory music-making sessions and in the situated in deeply understanding the emotion and affect of the participants, environment, politics, location, etc. in order to purposefully design workshops that are best suited to a particular community. In this application, I am proposing engaging communities through workshops designed to use junk materials commonly found in the within the physical environment surrounding a given community and other materials brought by participants to build instruments with meaning and challenge people to think 6 - 5 about sustainable practices. We will then use those instruments and co-create a piece of music that reflects the community represented. Junk instruments will be made accessible to the city on an outdoor music wall at Victoria Park. The community compositions will be posted on a YouTube channel and shared with the corresponding neighbourhood associations. In my practice to date, I have only created compositions with smaller groups at private functions (e.g. parties, small church choirs). This proposal stretches my practice by incorporating community compositions with larger groups and by focusing on a theme which has a very large scope and will likely be an extremely personal topic to participants of the workshop for many different reasons. The experience will help me hone my facilitation skills to bring and installing an outdoor music wall will also stretch my community musicianship as I have never created one before but have always admired other cities who have installed them. This installation I am proposing for the City of Kitchener will be unique, however, as it will be developed through deep community engagement. In order to engage the community in this project, I will host workshops at each of the City of Kitchener community centres. Junk instruments and musical compositions created will reflect the community associated with each centre. I will connect with city staff and neighbourhood associations to promote and encourage residents to attend these events and participate in creating an instrument that will be incorporated into a final display in Victoria Park. The outdoor music wall will feature a map of Kitchener and the instruments created will be placed on the map according to their corresponding community. QR codes can be scanned to link to the YouTube video of community compositions. Milestones and Timelines: In order to make this project scope manageable, I will combine community centres within close proximity and smaller sizes. 6 - 6 Proposed Timeline: Month Task Workshop at Bridgeport Community Centre January Workshop at Breithaupt Community Centre February Workshop at Downtown and Mill Courtland Community Centres March Workshop at Stanley Park Centreville Chicopee Community Centres April Workshop at Kingsdale Community Centre May Workshop at Country Hills and Williamsburg Community Centres June Workshop at Doon Pioneer Park Community Centre July Design, build and install outdoor music wall August - September Official unveiling of outdoor music wall October 6 - 7 6 - 8