Director's Message - March

Photo from Arts, Culture, and Heritage Working Group on February 11, 2020. Front row: Stephanie Azam (Telefilm), Peggy Lianis (Telefilm), Chuck Childs (Centaur Theatre Company), Guy Rodgers (ELAN Quebec), Danielle Azoulay (Department of Heritage Canada), Frédéric Coté (Conseil des arts de Montréal). Back row: Eric Jabbari (Advisor to the Premier of Quebec) Caroline McKinnon (Department of Heritage Canada), Tim Brady, Elena Villegas (National Film Board), Deborah Forde (ELAN Quebec), Sarah Dingle (Canada Council for the Arts), Karen Cho, and Keith Henderson.

By the end of March, ELAN’s micro-grants project – ArtistsInspire Grants – will have connected 150 schools with artists. Christie Huff and her team, Paula Knowles and Guillaume Jabbour, have recruited and vetted more than 100 artists for the project, and they have worked tirelessly to encourage schools and school boards to bring artists into their classrooms to experience the effect of art and inspiration on their students. The AIG team reached the target of half of Quebec’s public elementary and secondary schools in year one. Next year we are aiming to have 220 schools connected with artists, and all 300 schools by year three. See ELAN’s ArtEd program webpage and our facebook page for inspiring stories on the power of art.

I am excited to announce that ELAN’s Québec Relations project moves into action mode this month. During the summer and fall, project researcher Nick Maturo collected information on provincial government support for arts organization. In parallel to that work, we created a questionnaire that we sent to 250 artistic organization to identify their needs. Then we organized a series of focus groups with arts organizations to discuss obstacles to writing provincial grant applications. It demands time and effort to write an application, as well as cash costs to translate it into French, and there is no guarantee of a successful response. The Québec Relations project is designed to provide assistance that has never previously been available. We have created a searchable webpage listing over 100 sources of funding. This information has been translated and is available in English, which is often helpful even for the comfortably bilingual.

We are also planning information sessions and grant writing workshops. If you run an arts organization, we invite you to visit the webpage. If you see a program that interests you, but are reluctant to write a grant application, feel free to call us to see how we can help you overcome obstacles.
514.935.3312 x 28.

Guy Rodgers

Executive Director

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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Land Acknowledgement