Artists’ Capacity Building Clinics

We are excited to announce the newest round of ELAN’s Artist Capacity Building Clinics!

ELAN recognizes the need for one-on-one support and guidance and how difficult it can be to access that support. Building on past years of this program, these clinics aim to support artists and ELAN members in different aspects of their professional lives.

The Artist Capacity Building Clinics will provide subsidized, private consultations with experts in the following areas:

Housing, Civil, and Non-Profit Law
with Juripop
Taxes
with Dael Foster
Editing & Publishing
with Nathan Fréchette
Grant Writing
with Amber Berson

Clinics will be scheduled between February and March and provide one hour of consultation. Priority will be given to ELAN members (membership is pay-what-you-can, and you can click here to sign up ), and participants will otherwise be selected on a first-come-first-served basis. The cost to attend a clinic is $12.00, payable through the sign up link. You will be provided with payment instructions after reserving a clinic time slot through Calendly.

If cost is a barrier to attend, or if you have any issues regarding registration, please contact Iso at membership@quebec-elan.org.

Depending on the clinic, you may also be asked to provide support materials in advance – these will help your consultant make the most of your time together. You will be provided with information to prepare for your clinic after registering through Calendly.

To ensure we are able to provide these services to as many of our members as possible, we kindly suggest a limit of one clinic per person. If you wish to sign up for a second clinic, please contact Iso at membership@quebec-elan.org, and they can add you to a waiting list once all members have had a chance to sign up.

How to apply:

To reserve a spot in any of the clinics below, interested applicants must:

Select the clinic you would like to attend, and click the Registration link below the description to view available slots
On the Registration page on Calendly, select the date and the time slot you would like to reserve, and fill out the registration form.
You will receive an email confirming your reservation.
The reservation confirmation email will also include instructions on how best to prepare for the clinic meeting. Please be sure to read these instructions carefully, as you may be asked to provide documents ahead of your consultation

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Housing, Civil, and Non-Profit Law with Juripop

These clinics are in partnership with Juripop, a community legal clinic that offers creative, rigorous and accessible legal services to ensure that all people can assert their rights.

Sessions with Justine Sara can cover laws pertaining to Non-Profits (governance, policies, by-laws, and responsibilities) and Civil Law (contracts, formal letters, civil dispute, and small claims).

Sessions with Maria Galindo can cover Housing Law (lease, renewals, rent) and Civil law (contracts, formal letters, civil law, and small claims).

Book with Maria (February 20, March 8 & 21)

Book with Justine (March 1 & 2)

Taxes with Dael Foster

Participants will receive an hour-long consultation with arts accountant Dael Foster. They will give participants the opportunity to meet with Dael, to introduce their specific financial situation and accounting concerns, and to discuss their questions. Dael will offer advice, next steps, and strategies for managing materials.

About Dael Foster:

Dael Foster is a self-employed bookkeeper and accountant with 30+ years of experience in preparing personal income taxes. When not adulting, she can be found singing (badly) and doing costume design for community theatre.

Book with Dael (February 22, March 3)

FEB Members Exclusive (Instagram Post (Square)) (9)

Editing & Publishing with Nathan Fréchette

Do you need feedback on a piece of work which you want to get ready to sell? Are you wondering whether you should go the self-publishing route, or try to find a publisher or agent? Are you ready to pitch and/or submit a piece of work, and want guidance on the process and feedback on your submission?

In these clinics, you will be able to get editorial feedback on a short work such as a chapter, short story, or article, structural feedback about your plot/synopsis, and/or personalized feedback and coaching on your submission package, including your cover letter and/or nonfiction book proposal. Additionally, you can get realistic answers about the pros and cons of self-publishing vs going with a publisher, and custom advice based on your unique situation.

Nathan Fréchette is a sequential artist, publisher, and author. He has published over two dozen short stories, both graphic and prose, as well as five novels, three graphic novels, one collection of short fiction with multi-Aurora-award winner Derek Newman-Stille, and two works of nonfiction. He has been teaching creative writing and working as an editor and script doctor since 2005, and has a degree in Film Studies and another in Sequential Art, with a special honorific mention in scriptwriting. He was the founder and director of the French-Canadian literary magazine Histoires à Boire Debout, a managing editor and board member for the French Canadian graphic novel publisher Premières Lignes, and is co-founder, head designer and managing editor of the Gatineau-based publisher Renaissance. He currently sits on the board of directors for LitDistCo, a subsidiary of the Literary Press Group.

Book with Nathan (February 26, March 4, 5, 12)

Grant Writing with Amber Berson [SOLD OUT]

These hour-long clinics will provide attendees with personalized advice and feedback on the art grants landscape and the grant-writing process, focusing on federal grants. Depending on need and interest, attendees will get advice on the grant application process, learn about what funding and grants opportunities are available to them or might best suit their work, and receive feedback on grant drafts or applications in progress.

About Amber Berson

Amber Berson is a writer, curator, researcher, and SSHRC-funded PhD. Candidate in Art History conducting doctoral research at Queen’s University on artist-run culture and feminist, utopian thinking. She is based in Tiotia:ke, also known as Montreal, the unceded traditional territory of the Kanien’ke’ha:ka Nation. She/her pronouns.

Amber is the Executive Director of The Visual Arts Centre in Montreal.

In her spare time, Amber works on knowledge equity projects and is a co-lead of Art+Feminism Wikipedia project. She was the 2019-202 Wikipedian-in-Residence at Concordia Univeristy Libraries.

Book with Amber

(February 11 & 12, March 11 & 12)

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.

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