Call for Artists

Open Heart Arts Theatre is looking for artists’ proposals for creative community activations around themes of climate change and land sovereignty. 

Scroll down for details.

THE PROJECT: 

Open Heart Arts Theatre is a Hamilton-based company that creates community-engaged performances. We work in three year cycles, building relationships with communities and partners through art making workshops and performances. LEARN MORE ABOUT US BY CLICKING HERE. In Fall 2024, we will be starting a new cycle for The Lake Effect, a project that explores our relationship with the land.

THE ACTIVATIONS:

We’re looking for artists to plan and execute one-off workshops or a series of workshops that can engage communities in Hamilton around themes of land sovereignty and climate change. Maybe it’s a collaborative sculptural piece? Or a choral music development workshop? Parameters for proposals are broad but must be accessible to the community at large, specifically people who are new to art-making or experience barriers to art-making. The Open Heart team and our Lake Effect partners can collaborate with you to develop an activation that fits within the context we work in and the communities we most often engage. 

Currently, we are looking to meet with artists who could plan activations in Winter/Spring of 2025.

WHO SHOULD APPLY: 

  • Artists working in all disciplines

  • Artists with experience in community-engaged arts

  • Artists who haven’t worked with Open Heart Arts Theatre yet. This doesn’t mean artists we have worked with can’t apply as well! 

  • Artists of the Global Majority especially those who are Inuit, Metis, and First Nations; newcomers to Canada; artists from the disability community; and artists who are LGBTQ2S+ 

  • Artist who are already investigating ideas of climate change and land sovereignty in their own work

HOW TO APPLY:

Step One: Help us get to know you 

We want this process to be as easy and barrier-free as possible. Below are some things we’d like to learn about you. How you communicate that information to us is totally up to you - written format, video, voice memo, phone or Zoom call, or any other method that best helps you communicate. Materials, questions, and requests for support can be sent to Rose at rose@openheartartstheatre.com. 

We want to know: 

  • What drives your artistic practice? What do you have questions about? 

  • What experience do you have facilitating art-making and working in communities? In what communities do you most often engage?

  • What is it that you’re proposing? What would you need to make your activation a success?

Step Two: Let’s have coffee!

If we think your proposal is viable and a good fit for this initial phase of programming, we’ll invite you for coffee. Name your favourite Hamilton cafe and let us buy you a cup of joe (or tea, or soda, or whatever!) We’ll learn more about you, you’ll learn more about us, and we can get a better sense of how we might make it all happen!

OTHER THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

Fees: This is a paid opportunity. We want to be responsive to the proposals that come to us, so artist fees and budget for activation materials will be determined in collaboration with Open Heart staff. We are committed to equitable, sustainable compensation for all artists

This is new for us! We usually develop workshops with an ensemble of artists that we curate based on folks already known to us, but in an effort to expand our community and share some of the resources available to us, we’re putting out this open call. This is a learning opportunity for us and we appreciate your patience and feedback on this new process.