$73,100 OTF Seed Grant Created Opportunities for Emerging Arts Professionals at the Textile Museum of Canada
In 2019, the Textile Museum of Canada (the Museum) was thrilled to receive a $73,100 Seed grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) to pilot an initiative, called the Creatives-in-Residence (CIR) program, for emerging arts professionals to develop timely, interdisciplinary, and community-oriented projects. The CIR program ran from November 2019 to June 2021 and featured three emerging arts professionals: Artist-in-Residence Petrina Ng, Educator-in-Residence Justice Stacey, and Curator-in-Residence Mitra Fakhrashrafi.
Thanks to the OTF grant, the Museum’s CIR participants developed two exhibitions, interviewed three textile artists, and delivered five programs that were well attended by the Museum’s digital audiences and visitors when open.
Petrina Ng’s exhibition and publication Distant water will not quench a nearby fire looked at diasporic experiences of Hong Kong’s colonial histories and ongoing political unrest. Ng engaged the local arts community with Souped Up: Collective Pot, a project which facilitated relationship-building between racialized arts practitioners through communal meals, and allocated funds to the local advocacy group, Friends of Chinatown.
Justice Stacey’s two projects facilitated discussion and interaction between arts professionals and the Museum’s audiences: Terrific Textile Talks delivered live interviews with arts workers and Museum staff, and Curiously Crafting interviewed three Canadian textile artists; Tau Lewis, Audie Murray, and Collette Boulet.
Mitra Fakhrashrafi’s interactive workbook, And other monuments, invites audiences to engage with the Museum’s digital collection of ‘Oriental’ rugs while considering questions of colonial trade, imperial bordering, movement, and mobility. The workbook will be available digitally and presented at the Museum in September 2021 alongside arts-based interventions by local artists.
The OTF Seed grant made it possible for the Museum to support and mentor emerging arts professionals in the cultural sphere of Ontario. The funding provided the opportunity for three participants to produce significant new interpretations of the Museum’s existing collections, foster innovative interactions with Museum audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, and reimagineTextile-based arts practices. To view the projects and learn more about the CIR program and its participants, visit our Blog at textilemuseum.ca, and search for the Textile Museum of Canada on YouTube.
