Grant Writing for Artists and Organizations
A Workshop by Victoria Fenner, artist and arts business consultant
Monday January 23, 7-9:30 pm
Hamilton Ontario
This workshop is aimed at artists who want to put together a grant application to the Ontario Arts Council or The Canada Council. Covering topics like: a) how the arts grant system works in Canada; b) defining your art and positioning it within the larger arts context; c) your first grant — creative strategies which will increase your chances of success; d) writing the application — understanding the application, writing styles that work, crafting a realistic budget.
About Victoria Fenner: Victoria is a broadcaster and media artist who is known as “The Grants Queen”. For over 25 years, she has created a successful career for herself and associated artists finding funding in unconventional places. She most recently worked with The Factory Media Artist as a commissioned sound artist for the SOS Project, a Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council funded project. She has also worked as an arts administrator, particularly in community radio, and was co-owner of Community-media.com, a business assisting non profit organizations with business skills and organizational development.
Registration fee: $50
Location: 165 Queen St. S. #903, Hamilton Ontario
Registration fee includes a workbook which can be used to plan project grants.
To register, email Victoria at vlfenner@gmail.com or phone her at 289-396-2742.
Tags:fundraising·workshops
As the New Year approaches, here is my challenge to myself and to anyone else who wants to be more Present to the world.
Be here …
Amidst the soughing of the trees
The clicks and whirls of summer cicadas
gentle swish of the waves
On the distant shore Be here
Not there
In the centre of metal upon metal
Low grumble of machine
Hysterical wail of sirens
responding back to the wails of the world
Be here now
With closed eyes
With ears opened
To the possibilities of a world which hears its own heart.
- Victoria Fenner 2003
Tags:poetry
I just finished doing a pair of workshops on Grantwriting - one for Organizations, and another for individual artists. (which I will be doing again very soon .. watch this space for more details)
One of the things that puzzles people on the Canada Council application form is where they ask how an applicant’s art work fits in terms of the tradition of their particular art form.
That’s the part of the application that I have the most trouble with but yet it’s a question worth spending some time on.
It’s about our place in the continuum .. who and what ideas have influenced our work the most. And it also gives us a chance to explore who we in turn may be influencing.
It’s a good opportunity to look at our work in the bigger picture. Artistic creation is a solitary art … what I like about this question is that it’s a place to explore our interconnectedness.
Tags:grantwriting·sound art
Grantwriting Workshops with Victoria Fenner - November 23 & 26 2011
THE FACTORY in association with VICTORIA FENNER
Present
GRANTWRITING WORKSHOPS
FOR ORGANIZATIONS & ARTISTS
Writing your first grant can be a daunting task, but it doesn`t need to be. Join Victoria Fenner, Community based media artist, to get some valuable tips on how to get started and increase your chances of success.
Two different workshops will be offered:
For organizations: Wednesday November 23, 7 pm -9:30 pm
This workshop will focus on how to position a project for funding from a general purpose fund like The Ontario Trillium Foundation or a community foundation. It will cover issues such as a) how to create a project with lasting value b) fitting your project within a funder`s mandate; c) creating community partnerships that work d) budgeting and much more.
For artists: Saturday, November 26, 10:00 am - 12:30 pm
This workshop is aimed at artists who want to put together a grant application to the Ontario Arts Council and The Canada Council. Covering topics like: a) how the arts grant system works in Canada b) defining your art and positioning it within the larger arts context c) your first grant — creative strategies which will increase your chances of success d) writing the application — understanding the application, writing styles that work, crafting a realistic budget.
REGISTRATION FEES
$45 for one workshop
$80 for both workshops
Pre-registration necessary. Should you wish to pre-register, email Victoria or phone her at 289-396-2742
Tags:events·funding·grants·workshops
Here is the piece I did about being lost in the mountains .. you-cant-miss-it
Tags:Appalachia·audiomaps·soundart
Every now and again I open up an email that’s a perfect start to the day. Here’s one of them, from Jaydea Lopez, a soundscape artist and listener with a blog called Sounds Like Noise. She said:
I just wanted to write to you to say how much I love listening to your work. I first came upon it through Des’ Soundlandscapes site. I especially love “You Can’t Miss It” - field recordings usually help provide a sense of “exotic” space, but this piece helps provide a feeling of disorientation within that new space, making it much more physical than most recordings. The accents become as much a “sound” to disorient the listener as the music/birds/traffic etc. Love it!”
I replied: “I’m so glad you got the feeling of disorientation from “You Can’t Miss It”. It’s the way I felt the whole time I lived in Appalachia, and it was what I intended to convey in the piece. So I’m glad it worked.”
And it reminded me of one of my favourite field recordings. From the Appalachian mountains too .. A hot summer night. A traditional square dance, unamplified, in an old 1920s schoolhouse. Inside, the fiddles and voices of people dancing. Outside, the clicking, buzzing, popping and hissing of cicadas and other mountain bugs. They were much louder than further north here in Canada. I walked with my microphone in and out of the two ambiences creating natural fades.
I’ll post it on Soundcloud so you can hear it …
Thanks again Jaydea!
Tags:field recording
Story Sound Sell
A workshop with Steve Wadhams and Victoria Fenner
Saturday, October 15 10 am - 4 pm
Toronto Ontario
This is a rare opportunity to get the basics and learn the secrets from two leaders in the field of audio storytelling.
You’ll learn how to create audio stories that win hearts, minds and awards, and get great tips on how to find and build an audience for them.
The opportunities for aspiring storytellers who work with sound are greater than ever before. The internet has opened up all kinds of possibilities. And recording and editing gear is more affordable than it’s ever been.
Steve Wadhams of CBC Radio’s Living Out Loud is an international award winning creative documentarian. He has spent forty years as a producer and is in demand as a teacher and mentor of radio storytelling in Canada, the USA, and in Europe where he led a highly successful series of workshops for staff at the BBC in London England. Steve has won all the world’s major awards for radio, including the coveted Prix Italia. He is also the first non American to be honoured as an “Audio Luminary” by the Chicago based Third Coast International Audio Festival. Steve’s work ranges from the journalistic to the impressionistic and he’s always looking for new ways to tell a story on radio. He will share his expertise with you and give you advice on how to get your work on our venerable Mother Corp. (yes, it is still possible)
Victoria Fenner is a documentary poet and audio artist whose works have been played on radio, in galleries, internet, on streetcorners and many other non-traditional venues for sound. Always thinking beyond the Sound Box (aka The Radio), she is also known as “The Grants Queen”. She’ll share some unconventional and profitable strategies for funding new audio work, including Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council.
Workshop details:
Saturday, October 15, 2011
10 am - 4 pm
Location: home of Steve Wadhams, West Toronto (address provided when we receive your registration. It’s easily accessible by subway and car)
Cost: $125 (lunch provided)
Enrollment limited to 10 people.
To Register: email Victoria Fenner at vlfenner@gmail.com. Payment accepted by cheque and Email Interac.
or call Victoria at 289-396-2742
For more information about Steve Wadhams: Living Out Loud
website
Victoria Fenner: Magnetic Spirits, Victoria’s soundart website
Tags:workshops
So it wasn’t quite a vacation. I’ve been working. But what a wonderful and fun summer.
For the first time in quite a few years, I’ve been able to spend six whole months doing nothing but soundart.
I had very two surprising requests. As many of you know, all of my work up until now has been for the virtual world — radio and internet.
Late last year, two organizations, Culture For Kids in the Arts and the Factory Media Arts Centre, approached me to ask if they could commission some sound art pieces from me. The twist .. they wanted my work to live out on the streets, in parks and community centres.
The picture above is one of the results. It’s part of CKA’s Artasia project, which is an art education/environment project for 450 kids all over the city. My part was to develop compositions for six of these listening posts in various places in Hamilton. Each post has three sound movements composed of sounds by kids. I worked with them getting them to create the sounds, then took them home and made them into the pieces that live in the post. Press the eyes and nose to make the sound happen. The speaker is in her mouth.
The listening post design is by Victoria Long-Vincza and Eric Powell. Eric created the technology that transmits the sound. With painting an construction done by the interns and apprentices of the Artasia project.
First movement: What do the kids hear in their neighbourhood
Second Movement: What do they like about their neighbourhood, what would they like to change?
Third Movement: If you could have anything in your neighbourhood at all, what would you like?
The third movement was the most fun for me to compose. I got to create a zoo, an amusement park, a farm, an arcade and an airport terminal.
I’ll post a couple of the sound pieces later. Next up .. five pieces which will live on James Street North in Hamilton focusing on urban renewal.
Better get back to composition … deadline is approaching fast for SOS - Soul of the Street — the project for The Factory which opens this Friday night.
PS - thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for making these projects possible. And to CKA and The Factory for inviting me to work on these dynamic and innovative projects. Also thanks to Renee Jackson, the director of the Artasia project; Vitek Wincza, the artistic director of the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts; and Josefa Radman, who brought me in to this project and wrote the (very successful) grant application. And of course, all the kids.
Tags:community·installation·soundart
Like it??
Tags:
For the last two days, my morning routine is to get up, go to the window, look outside and yelling into the wind.
It hasn’t done any good. The branches continue to sway, the leaves continue to whisper as they rub against each other.
Very poetic, but not at all good for recording.
I’ve been trying to get an outdoor music session together with the lovely and talented Katie Romain, a multi-instrumentalist and family friend who just returned from a busking tour of Eastern Europe. We are trying to organize a very simple outdoor recording to use in one of my pieces for The Factory Media Arts Centre. It will be called “Kind of Like Europe or maybe Montreal” and it’s a street music composition so people can hear the kind of sounds I want to hear on James Street North in Hamilton.
Well, we finally have our nice day. Not a branch is moving nor leaf rustling. No wind noise across the microphone to contend with.
Let the concert begin!
Tags:field recording·SOS·soundart·Windsor
