Director's Message: May 2017

Summer 2017 will be filled with celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation and the 375th anniversary of the founding of Montreal.

ELAN received confirmation in late April for our Canada 150 project: a special 2017 edition of Arts Alive! Québec. Community arts festivals will take place in Knowlton in the Eastern Townships, Huntingdon in the Chateauguay Valley, Wakefield in West Quebec, the Morrin Centre in Quebec City, Hudson in the Montérégie and in Montreal’s West Island. We’re excited to work for the third time with our wonderful regional partners to showcase performing and visual artists as well as writers and filmmakers.

What does this mean for ELAN members? Arts Alive! Québec will provide work for dozens of artists, including specific opportunities for ELAN members. Follow ELAN on Facebook and Twitter, where we’ll share the details as soon as we have them.

Arts Alive! Québec 2017 perfectly complements ELAN’s current Canada Council Market Access projects. These projects will connect performing and visual artists with presenters, producers, and curators from the ROC, the USA, and beyond.

Visual artists can apply now to have their work reviewed by New York and Toronto curators in October. And starting this month, ELAN’s SAVVY Sessions for Performing Artists will offer hands-on skill development in promoting and touring works in dance, theatre, and music.

We’re actively exploring ways to adapt the Performing Arts Market Access project to artists’ needs. If you haven’t already, fill out this quick survey to tell us how we can help you push your work to the next level.

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.