Shevchenko Foundation.
The $25,000 REACH Mentorship/Residency for the Arts has returned for a third year, encouraging emerging Canadian artists to reach for their career dreams by seeking opportunities for mentorship, residency, internship, training, workshop and research. The grant program is a project of the Shevchenko Foundation in partnership with the Ihnatowycz Family Foundation.
The 2021 REACH funding opportunity is open to individual applicants who are 40 years of age or younger; have a connection to Ukrainian heritage through background, art, culture and/or language (with no requirement to be Ukrainian Canadian); and work actively within the Ukrainian arts community in Canada and/or worldwide. Applicants are required to have practised at a peer-recognized advanced career level for a minimum of two years in visual, literary or performing arts, new media, or arts management.
Philanthropists Ian Ihnatowycz and Dr. Marta Witer of the Ihnatowycz Family Foundation believe “the artist’s job is to reach.” They created the REACH funding opportunity to give artists what they need to reach higher, further and deeper in their craft with greater confidence and curiosity; to enable them to reach beyond their current communities and markets while never forgetting who they are.
In his 2019 REACH Mentorship/Residency proposal, inaugural recipient Andrew Kushnir spoke about “Great Voyages” as invoked by his favourite playwright, Tony Kushner. Kushnir urges 2021 applicants “to find the big dream, the “Great Voyage” you want to undertake in your creative practice, your life. REACH … allows an artist in Canada to aspire and explore boldly, to transcend perceived limits. What this residency has provided me has certainly impacted my evolution in deep and meaningful ways.”
REACH funding enabled 2020 recipient Lianna Makuch to expand her skills as a storyteller under the mentorship of acclaimed Canadian writer Nicolas Billon. Makuch is currently adapting her play Blood of Our Soil into a screenplay. She notes that “the onset of COVID-19 has impacted all those in the creative fields” and is grateful that “REACH has empowered me to delve deeply into my work. I have already grown as an artist, and I now realize how much more I can achieve.”
The Shevchenko Foundation is a national, chartered philanthropic institution dedicated to the preservation, promotion and development of the Ukrainian-Canadian cultural heritage and to the advancement of a flourishing Ukrainian community for the enrichment of Canada by providing leadership in building and sustaining a permanent endowment fund.
Andrew Hladyshevsky, Q.C., president of the Shevchenko Foundation, is proud that “with the continuation of the REACH Mentorship/ Residency for the Arts, opportunity meets creative need. This grant plays an essential role by encouraging and accelerating the career of the recipient artist. We hope this annual leadership gift will prompt others to donate and help meet the need.”
The deadline for REACH applications is February 1, 2021. Additional information and an application form are available at www.reachmentorship.com. The successful applicant will be announced in May 2021.
CONTACT:
REACH Mentorship/Residency for the Arts
[email protected]
www.reachmentorship.com
www.shevchenkofoundation.com
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