Grant Feedback Café

Free event

We know navigating granting systems can be an intimidating and difficult experience for many artists. That’s why SAVAC has invited four artists and cultural workers who are experienced in grant writing, editing, and the peer assessment process to help you strengthen a draft proposal. This session is geared towards providing artists of colour with honest and personalized feedback from a knowledgeable peer reviewer. Reviewers can advise you on budgeting, concise and clear writing, and more complex considerations such as ensuring your creative methodology and concerns as a racialized, diasporic person are legible to jurors without sacrificing your vision.

Need some motivation to get that pesky writing done? Bring your laptop to take advantage of our quiet co-working space during this event. 

How does it work?

One-on-one visits with peer reviewers will be timed and organized on a first-come, first-serve basis. Show up early to ensure your spot! Only one application per artist or collective will be reviewed. Applications to any funder or stream are welcome.

Please Note: We cannot review drafts for the Ontario Arts Council’s Exhibition Assistance program as SAVAC is a recommender, but we can answer questions.

Who is this event for?

• Artists of colour at any stage of their careers who want feedback on an in-progress grant application to any funder or stream
• Anyone who wants to co-work among peers
• No prior experience with grant writing is necessary

How do I participate?

Bring a draft “project proposal” for your grant (i.e. the main question that asks what you intend to do and why). You can either bring a print out or upload it to this folder with your name in advance. Written text should be 500 words maximum. Optionally, you can also bring a draft budget to be reviewed.

File Types: Word or Google Docs for writing (no PDFs or PAGES please). For budgets, upload as Excel or Google Sheets.

Upcoming Grant Deadlines

Refer to funder websites for eligibility and further criteria. 

Toronto Arts Council
Media Arts Creation – October 15, 2024
Visual Arts Creation – Rolling Deadline

City of Hamilton Enrichment Fund
Creation and Presentation for Artists – November 15, 2024

Ontario Arts Council
Visual Arts Creation Projects – November 5, 2024
Deaf and Disability Arts: Materials for Visual Artists – October 10, 2024

Canada Council for the Arts
Professional Development for Artists – November 5, 2024
Research and Creation – anytime before project starts
Concept to Realization – anytime before projects starts
Travel Grants – anytime before departure date

Accessibility: Wheelchair ramp at the east entrance of the building. There is an elevator and accessible bathrooms. A light dinner will be served. Masks are encouraged and will be provided. Wifi and public computers available. 

About the Reviewers

Lesley Loksi Chan is an artist and arts worker concerned with questions of invisibility, believability and resistibility. Shaped by the histories of anthropology and cinema, her work asks how material culture and image culture affect the particular ways we think, remember, and live together in contradiction. As an arts worker, she curates, facilitates, and organizes artist-driven projects. Informed by frameworks of decolonization and equity, she is dedicated to supporting artists in sharing their visions through care and collaboration. Lesley’s works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her artistic practice has been supported by the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and she is a recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship (2017). She holds a BA in Anthropology and Women’s Studies (McMaster University) and an MFA in Film Production (York University). Lesley is the daughter of settler immigrants from British Hong Kong and was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada which is situated upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. 

Areas of Knowledge: Media arts, film, video, art collectives, programming, curating, teaching, grant writing. 

Camille Rojas (b. 1993 Toronto; lives and works in Toronto) is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in film, photography and performance. Her work is informed by experiences traversing through life and the hyperfixations that sometimes come from it and the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which. Recent interests include: X, Y & Z.

Areas of Knowledge: Film, photography, performance, performance art, dance, editing, digital technician, DIY, budgeting, project management.

Abedar Kamgari is an artist, curator, and the artistic director of SAVAC. Her art practice engages bodily, repetitive, and labour-intensive artmaking strategies to reflect on the contexts and conditions of displacement and diaspora. She holds a BFA (2016) and an MFA (2022), where her research was supported by the Ontario Graduate Scholarship and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Abedar has convened and sat on countless juries for artist-run centres, universities, and public galleries. She has written successful artistic and organizational grants to foundations and arts councils at all three levels of government and participated in grant peer assessment panels for the City of Hamilton and Ontario Arts Council.

Areas of Knowledge: Diaspora, performance art, video, ceramics, textiles, experimental practice, exhibition installation, editing, budgeting.

Indu Vashist has been the Executive Director of SAVAC since 2013. In her years at SAVAC, she has written and read countless artistic and organizational grants and has sat peer assessment panels for the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Manitoba Arts Council. Her art writing has been published in forums such as Canadian Art, Art Asia Pacific, Public Parking, Kafila, and New Indian Express. She is interested in words that are precise and art that is not precious.

Areas of Knowledge: Visual art, media art, performance, writing, diaspora, South Asia.

Image: Lesley Loksi Chan. Film still. “Work in progress” (2024).