Up to $50,000 for a Québec dancer or digital artist to make a work with a team of ocean climate scientists.
If you're a dancer or a digital artist living in Québec, this one is for you. Two artists will be picked, one in dance and one in digital arts, to make a work from research the Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR) is doing on the ocean and climate change. Each gets up to $50,000, covering research, creation and the artist's own pay.
It is the second edition of a three-year agreement between UQAR and the CALQ, Québec's public arts council, and it closes on 16 December 2026 at 11:59 PM.
The dance work is called Réinventer nos ancrages. It is about the communities along the St. Lawrence that are attached to their land and are being forced to adapt to coastal erosion and flooding. The UQAR team works participatively, asking residents to imagine the place they would want to live in and how to get there.
So what counts as digital arts? For the CALQ, it is work made and shown mainly with digital technology. That covers computer, electronic, sound, interactive and web-based work, and audio art too.
The digital work, Le passé est un prologue, is made for an immersive dome. It draws on marine sediment archives, which let paleoclimatologists reconstruct how the climate has changed over time and test whether today's warming has a precedent.
Each project pairs the artist with a UQAR research team and a presenting partner. The Société des arts technologiques in Montréal, home of the Satosphère dome, presents the digital work. The Vieux Théâtre de Saint-Fabien, a heritage hall in the Bas-Saint-Laurent, presents the dance piece. Both give artistic and technical support during the research.
The collaboration with the scientists can run for up to 18 months, and the first presentation is suggested within 24 months of the grant. Exchanges with the research team can happen in French or English.
UQAR and the CALQ fund it jointly. The research sits inside Transformer l'action pour le climat, a $154 million programme shared by four Canadian universities and running from 2023 to 2030.
Let's be clear about the size of it: the CALQ funds more than 1,800 artist projects a year, and this call picks two.
An information panel on 20 October brings UQAR's research teams together with Dominique Bilodeau, the CALQ programme officer. It is the chance to hear the scientists describe the projects before writing a proposal.
- ·Professional artists in dance or in digital arts, applying as individuals. A company or other incorporated group cannot apply.
- ·Canadian citizens or permanent residents who ordinarily live in Québec and have lived there for the past 12 months.
- ·In dance: at least one production outside or after your training, presented in a context your peers recognise. In digital arts: work shown publicly in a context your peers recognise.
- ·Circus is not one of the two disciplines. A circus artist whose practice is also dance would have to apply as a dance artist and meet the dance criteria.