Funding Announcement! ELAN ArtEd to participate in new provincially-funded youth mental health initiative

The role of Teaching Artists in Supporting Youth Mental through promotion and empowerment strategies

Big News!

We are excited to announce that ELAN’s ArtEd program has been invited to participate in a 3-year Youth Mental Health Initiative funded by the Fondation Lucie & André Chagnon and the Government of Quebec’s Secretariat à la Jeunesse. The overall goal of the project, managed by the Community Health & Social Services Network (CHSSN), is:

“to improve access to mental health resources and services for young English-speaking Quebecers ages 15 -29 in order to better meet their needs, especially those exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

ArtEd’s involvement will include collaborating with other organizations receiving funding across the province to educate and advocate for the roles that Teaching Artists can play in Supporting Youth Mental Health in and through the Arts. We will use the guide for teaching artists created by Tiina Kukkonen, PhD to equip other partners with knowledge of how to implement projects involving arts & culture experiences.

How to Get Involved:

All Artists who will be working with youth ages 15 – 29 before March 2022 are invited to participate in the learning communities that we will facilitate.

Payment for participation at a minimum of $75/hour will include preparatory readings, 3 or 4 interactive zoom sessions, and submission of feedback and data required for our reporting on the Artist’s work with youth.

If you are not already a Teaching Artist profiled on ArtistsInspire.ca, please connect with us at artistsinspiregrants@quebec-elan.org by November 10th, 2021 to be included in the application process. The goal of the learning communities is for Teaching Artists to feel supported, connected, empowered and confident in their work with youth.

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Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.