Lakeshore Arts is seeking project proposals to activate our Community Project Space in our 2021 programming season.

Lakeshore Arts’ Community Project Space (CPS) is a storefront programming and exhibition space, used for regular and occasional programs and events, as well as ongoing site activations. CPS activations often engage with community knowledge and involve collaboration and/or participation as core components of the work. Past CPS activations have focused on community assets, neighbourhood artifacts, housing, the opioid crisis, geopolitical borders and climate change and involved partnerships with community organizations such as Daily Bread Food Bank, LAMP Community Health Centre and Polycultural Immigrant and Community Services. 

For the upcoming 2021 programming season, we are looking for projects that incorporate significant participatory elements, can be engaged with actively or passively, are designed to evolve over time through interaction with the community and include free public events that further activate the projects and create opportunities for connection building and knowledge sharing.

We are accepting proposals from applicants that respond broadly to the following thematic prompt: 

With varying degrees of influence, systems shape and govern fundamental aspects of our lives: our bodies, relationships, environments, movement, identities, access, resources and opportunities. Yet these systems are often obscure to the public and designed and administered inequitably. As a global pandemic and anti-racism protests bring focus to the inequality of the systems we interact with, we are presented with an opportunity to observe and scrutinize these systems as well as imagine alternatives. With this opening in mind, we are inviting applicants to develop a project that examines the form, purpose and consequences of human systems including political, economic, justice, information, education, transportation, and health (plus any others) and considers some of the following questions:

+ How are systems expressed? 
+ How do we experience systems and how do our experiences of these systems differ depending on our social location?
+ How has a system succeeded or failed at its expressed or tacit objectives? 
+ How are systems made opaque and for what reasons?
+ How do existing systems harm or help, exploit or nurture us and how does this differ depending on our social location?
+ How are systems influenced by their environments and environments influenced by systems?
+ How do human made and biological systems interact with and influence each other?
+ What alternative systems can we imagine? 

Acknowledging this subject is expansive and complex, we aim to present projects that are thought provoking while remaining accessible and engaging for community members of different ages, abilities and experiences and offer layered points of entry that can accommodate those differences.

More details including proposal requirements and how to apply are available to view or download here.

Deadline to apply: August 17, 2020.
Submissions and questions can be directed to our Community Project Space Curator Jacqui via email jacqui@lakeshorearts.ca