New Year for Trellis Micro-grants

ELAN x Circonflexe Mentorship Schmoozer, Photo Credit: Lauren Katherine Clinton

Montreal, February 3—Good news from Trellisland! The jury process is proceeding smoothly and we’re expecting results on schedule. It’s been quite a task for our intrepid jurors—all 27 of them! Fortunately, they’re more than up to the task. Our jury consists of industry veterans, emerging creatives, and everything in between, encompassing all the different artistic viewpoints you could ask for! The discussions so far have been spirited and filled with healthy debate, just as we like it. 

The discipline-specific pod juries have done the herculean task of reducing the pool of applications in preparation for the Final Jury’s upcoming meeting. That one, too, will be a hair-pulling decision, as all the projects that have made it this far are already uniformly excellent. But such is the nature of grant juries... I daresay we’re inured to it by now! One thing’s for certain: the English-language arts community is not short of brilliant creative ideas! 

Meanwhile, the last few Round 2 Trellis projects are nearing completion. Geordie Theatre’s Playground Festival found new audiences at the French-language Maison Théâtre, presenting three standout plays for young audiences: Beyond Belief, Celestial Bodies, and 2061 (by the beloved late Montreal playwright Harry Standjofski). West-Can Folk Performing Company teamed up with Mapou Ginen to present Cycles, a dance performance blending traditions from the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean. To come, we have The Forest by Carson Becke, a concert piece set to debut at Centre Wakefield La Peche on March 13. If you’re in Outaouais, don’t miss it! 

I also had the pleasure of promoting the Trellis project at various amazing ELAN events, including the ELAN x Circonflexe Mentorship Schmoozer at the MAI, where my French got a serious workout. Always a joy to go out into the community and connect with artists face-to-face!