Photo courtesy of Neda Mirbagheri

Written by Parul Pandya, Commiunity Engagement Manager, Neighbourhood Arts Network

Neighbourhood Arts Network is excited to be partnering with WorkInCulture for the inaugural RBC Artist Mentorship Award! The Award is designed to celebrate newcomer artists who demonstrate artistic excellence and are making a contribution to Toronto’s cultural life.

The award came about when Toronto Arts Foundation's Neighbourhood Arts Network recognized the need for an award that bridges the need for newcomer artists to develop sustainable entrepreneurial skills. It was important to address some of the challenges facing this group of professional artists in Toronto, and create opportunities for them to foster a relationship within the business community to not only further their administrative skills, but also widen their network of local community connections.

Neighbourhood Arts Network is aware of the work that WorkInCulture has been doing around championing mentorship best practices, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to collaborate! While Neighbourhood Arts Network managed designing, promoting and selecting the newcomer artists, WorkInCulture has been collecting a database of mentors with an array of skills, who will be vetted and matched with artists who had successful applications.

This year six talented multi-disciplinary artists have been selected by a jury of professional Toronto artists to receive this exciting award:

• Mao Correa is a Colombian plastic artist, photographer and graphic designer based in Toronto. For over 25 years, Mao has maintained an independent practice as a plastic artist expressing, through the creation of eclectic and visceral art work, his fearless attitude against the lack of environmental awareness and frenzied consumerism.
• Carlos Delgado is a Colombian artist based in Toronto. His works explore a multitude of expressions and ranges of human self-expression. Focusing on capturing the subtleties of emotions and experiences as expressed through the face and the body, his work becomes a reflection of each individual being and humans as a whole.
• Paola Gomez is an artist facilitator, writer and human rights lawyer. She is also the co-founder and director of Sick Muse Art Projects. In 2008 Paola was awarded Toronto Community Foundation Vital People award for her contribution to the city of Toronto by her community led initiatives
• Serene Husni Alahmad is a Palestinian-Jordanian filmmaker and multimedia journalist with years of experience creating short documentary films and videos. Her directorial debut Zinco won the Audience Award for Best Documentary from the Franco-Arab Film Festival in 2013. Zinco is a visual study of the construction material used in building Palestinian refugee habitats. Set in the Talbieh Refugee Camp in Jordan, the film looks for visible manifestations of displacement.
• Paul Salter is a documentary filmmaker, born in Devon, England. In 2009, Paul completed his dissertation film - a story filmed at sea, capturing two characters lost on a fishing boat. In 2011, Paul arrived in Toronto and currently working on an interactive web-documentary platform that presents the stories of Toronto newcomer artists.
• Dana Prieto is a multidisciplinary artist, activist and educator born in Buenos Aires and based in Toronto. Her current work experiments with video, repurposed materials and light, creating immersive installations that propose collective participatory experiences. Through her practice she explores the female identity and her diverse cultural roots braided with experiences of migration, community, remembrance and regeneration.

Stay tuned to hear more about the mentors that will be paired with these artists, and follow their experiences in learning more about creating a sustainable artistic practice.

For any questions about Neighbourhood Arts Network, please contact parul@torontoarts.org

If you’re interested in mentoring please contact Stephanie Draker at stephaniedraker@workinculture.ca