Trellis Micro-grants: Round 3 Summary
Artwork by Carolina Aguirre.
Montreal, May 21 — The English Language Arts Network (ELAN) is proud to share a summary of the projects funded by Trellis Micro-grants (TMG) for 2026-2027. The following is an overview of the 15 projects (out of 370 applicants) that were supported in the third year of funding. There was an enormous amount of quality work presented to the jury, and it is a testament to these incredible projects that they stood out among such riches.
Funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Official Languages Support Programs, TMG seeks to highlight English-language Arts and Artists, and the contributions they make to the Quebec cultural fabric. Funding seeks to support artistic practice by extending the visibility of artistic offerings to a broader community, and build bridges between Québec’s English-speaking minority and Francophone majority.
The descriptions are taken directly from the artists’ applications, edited for privacy and/or brevity. Let them tell you in their own words about the value and impact their work will have.
If you are interested in applying for the 2027-2028 round (submissions opening Fall 2026), have a read below to see the kind of work that has successfully fulfilled the grant’s mandate. Previous project descriptions can also be found here.
ARTISTS 2026-2027
A frame from Anne Koizumi’s Le Magnifique.
Carolina Aguirre - City of Many Roots
City of Many Roots is a four-session bilingual (EN/FR) creative program for youth based in Montréal. Through creative writing and mixed-media art, participants explore the topic of identity and their sense of belonging in Québec. While “identité Québécoise” is a frequent topic of public discussion, its meaning varies widely across communities. How does francophone, anglophone, and immigrant youth navigate belonging across two or three cultures? How do they connect to Montréal? This project creates a structured and supportive space for guided conversations around these questions.
The program will run in partnership with two local community centers: one anglophone and one francophone to ensure balanced participation and accessible entry points for youth from different linguistic backgrounds. Each center will host a series of bilingual workshops involving guided writing prompts, mixed-media art exercises, and the creation of an individual clay piece for exhibition. Participants from both centres will then come together for a final joint session where they will share their work, reflect collectively on identity, and build cross-linguistic connections.
Moe Clark - tastawayihk dreaming (returning from 2025-2026)
For this grant, we are proposing a continuum of creative and cultural collaborations with Tiohtià:ke’s 2Spirit, Indigenous and arts communities, by hosting a second series of four big drum circles. These drum circles provide tastawayihk-iyiniwak (2Spirit people) and Indigenous community in Tiohtià:ke and greater Kahnawake and Kahnesatà:ke access to learning and singing drum songs with professional 2Spirit artists and revered Elders, participation in talking circles, healing practices, and intergenerational knowledge transmission.
In moving forward, we are proposing two more intimate circles for 2Spirit community only, and two more public circles with invitations to other Indigenous community.
Le Magnifique is a 15 minute, 2-D hand-drawn digital animation about a shy Japanese Canadian girl growing up in 1990s Montreal who discovers a passion for Mario Lemieux and hockey analytics through an unlikely friendship with her retired neighbour.
The film explores themes of personal growth, cultural identity, and intergenerational relationships, showing how sports can bridge differences and foster a sense of community.
Keiko’s story echoes the experience of many children of immigrants in Quebec and across Canada, negotiating between languages, cultures, and generational expectations. Le Magnifique is both a celebration of community and a quiet reminder that identity is not static, it’s something we keep rewriting, generation after generation.
Gabriela Jovian-Mazon - Wild Card Whacking
This proposal is for the second edition of the Whacking battle, Wild Card, a curated and artistic performance event scheduled for December 2026 in Montreal. The Trellis Grant will help fund the event and affiliated promotional activities. As a result, Wild Card will expand its English- and French-speaking audience, offer favorable conditions to local English-language artists and, share and promote Whacking in Quebec, a queer and English-language art form and culture.
Wild Card is an evening where strategy dances with surprise. Unexpected twists and turns occur thanks to a deck of custom bilingual playing cards. It features a host, the game-masters, a judge, a DJ and a few dozens of participants. Like a traditional 1 vs 1 battle, dancers freestyle for 45 seconds to the DJ’s selection, and the judge decides who advances. In Wild Card however, before each battle, the dancers must choose and play a card from their hand. Sometimes they are beneficial, sometimes they are disadvantageous... and sometimes their effects just make things more fun and creative!
The evening also features performances by the judge, an invited group work, and a closing DJ set. Wild Card is a high-energy, bilingual, public showcase of Whacking that highlights Montreal’s community, its history, and its artistic range, creating a space for creativity, exchange, and gathering.
This project is a special edition of our writing workshop, ideally hosted in Parc La Fontaine. The outdoor setting allows live music to reverberate, creating an immersive atmosphere that pulls in curious onlookers. The event will be free and bilingual, promoting anglophone writing to a wider audience while fostering collaboration with francophone artists.
Music functions as a universal language, creating space for writers of any language to engage in their solitary writing practice together. The workshop will be MC’d by our three-member poetry collective, who will introduce the musicians and read a poem to set the tone. Attendees will receive bilingual writing prompts and materials. After a 15-minute intermission, the second set features a bilingual collaborative performance with our collective and two francophone poets, accompanied by live music.
At the end of the workshop, attendees will be encouraged to submit their writing—poetry, prose, or free-verse—which will come together in a bilingual publication reflecting ~100 voices. A Montreal-based translator/editor will handle French submissions, while our collective copy-edits English contributions and designs the layout. The graphic designer producing the promotional poster will also design the cover. We will print 150 copies at Tsar Print Shop, with a 10% discount already secured.
I propose to edit and publish a series of four zines on 2SLGBTQ+ history in Montreal and Quebec, each by a different author, and selected via an open call for submissions. The texts could be written in either English or French, since each zine will be published in a tête-bêche format, with one side in English and the other side with the same content in French.
The zines could take the form of personal recollections, interviews and oral histories, or research-based work. Their topics could include analysis of a trans artist’s work, the history of lesbian bars in Montreal, intersections between 2SLGBTQ+ and anti-racist or Indigenous sovereignty work, or documentation of 2SLBGTQ+ events like parties, zine fairs, or activist actions. While the zines could draw on academic work, they would be written to be accessible and interesting to a general audience.
Jennifer Roberts - The Sound of Dogs
The Sound of Dogs is a darkly comedic piece told through the eyes of CODA, the hearing child of Deaf parents. While grappling with the question, “What's it like to have Deaf parents?,” CODA traces her parents’ and her own path through a hearing world, revealing misconceptions and prejudices, and our society's fixation on assimilation. The play, created in ASL and English, brings together Deaf and hearing artists in a production accessible to both audiences. It celebrates the cultural richness of the Deaf community, highlighting the beauty and nuance of ASL.
Using captions, projections, poetry, movement, and music, the play weaves visual and auditory storytelling. Linguistic duality is built into the design, with projections extending beyond sur-titles to convey text as expressive and dynamic. All aspects of design integrate both visual and auditory elements, including visual music. The ASL-English premiere will take place in fall 2026, in a co-production between Imago Theatre and our collective, presented at the Centaur Theatre.
Maggie Winston - Beaver Dreams
This project redevelops a bilingual puppet-and-clown show for all ages inspired by the history of my Anglophone family’s log cabin in Morin-Heights, a place I’ve spent every summer of my life. Blending puppetry, clowning, documentary storytelling, and projected hand-drawn animation, the show humorously explores the relationship between humans and beavers from 1939 to today. Since its creation in 2016 in Montreal, it has toured the Northeast USA and across Canada (in English communities) but has never been presented in the place where the story originates.
ORGANIZATIONS 2026-2027
The Material Stargazer installation at the MAI.
Arts Arundel - Arundel Community Choir (returning from 2025-2026)
The anglophone population of our region in the Laurentians is sprinkled across several municipalities without a cohesive sense of community. For several years, there has been a demand from these isolated anglophones to form a Community Choir to sing popular music. The problem has been that no choir director is available locally and hiring from Montreal was beyond our reach. With your funding we will follow a Train-the-Trainer model to pair a local musician with a mentor conductor for a year’s apprenticeship.
Formation of a primarily anglophone choir singing mostly English-language songs, many written by anglophone Quebecers from the Laurentians, will surely render English-language Arts more visible and more appreciated. Inclusion of francophones in the choir and of music from French Quebec in the song list will build bridges between language communities in our region. Once the choir is established, joint events with francophone choirs will strengthen ties in a joyful way.
BW Musique - MARS: Signs of Life
Our next English-language contemporary chamber opera production, entitled MARS: Signs of Life, follows the experiences of 3 characters – identified as the Astronomer, the Geologist and the Engineer, as they deal with the complexity of setting up a space station and colony on Mars. The opera is set in three different years: 2040, 2041, 2140, following the evolution of this Mars station project.
The opera discusses climate change, space travel, colonisation and the nature of humanity, as well as more personal issues such as fear, panic and hope. As with all good contemporary operas, the idea is for the audience to leave with more questions than answers. The libretto does not preach to the audience, but it tries to make the audience think about these issues from many angles, and to come to their own conclusions. The music is contemporary classical with jazz and minimalist overtones.
The premiere performances will take place at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal on Dec. 2, 3 and 4, 2026.
Exposures Trans Film Festival - 3rd Exposures Trans Film Festival (returning from 2025-2026)
We are seeking support for the third edition of Canada’s only film festival dedicated to the works of trans and gender-diverse filmmakers, scheduled for September 16–20, 2026 at Union Française in Montréal.
As the first festival of its kind in Québec—and one of only seven worldwide—this festival provides a rare opportunity for trans people to see our lives reflected with honesty, nuance, and care. The success of our first two editions shows just how necessary this is: across 2024 & 2025, we screened 160+ films from 35+ countries, averaged 100 attendees per screening, and brought national recognition to trans cinema through coverage in outlets like CBC, Fugues, and Maisonneuve.
In 2026, we aim to build on this momentum with an even more ambitious third edition, closely informed by the evolving needs of our community. Post-festival feedback made it clear that this festival is more than a cultural event: it is a safe space where people find solidarity, understanding, and hope in a time marked by rising anti-trans hostility.
Our project proposal includes several artistic workshops, new learning materials, and the continued development of networks and partnerships with local organizations to develop our initial phase of community-based arts projects rooted in intersectionality, which is central to our organizational mandate.
Material Stargazer is an experimental art project. Its aesthetics revolve around community dynamics, testing the boundaries of creative practice and activism. Five artists and community organizers, aged 20 to 87, from culturally diverse and 2ELGBTQIA+ communities, are leading this project. They will organize workshops in collaboration with community centers and organizations in Milton-Parc throughout Spring 2026 before presenting the results of their collaborations in Fall 2026 in our space.
The second series of activities will be dedicated to Black communities in Montreal, with a specific outreach program in the Milton-Parc neighborhood, including two self-massage and movement meditation workshops for members of Black communities with a registered massage therapist, a market featuring Afro-descendant artisans in partnership with the Konbitage organization, two writing workshops with live music, and more.
No Excuses No Limits Movement - No Limits Festival
We are proposing to collaborate with the Académie de Danse Montréal by providing artistic direction, choreographic and technical support for students in their Inclusive Dance Class to deliver a performance at our annual No Limits Festival in June 2026.
We have a successful long-term partnership with the Académie de Danse Montréal to deliver our specialized Inclusive Dance Class, which dismantles barriers to participation in dance for youth with disabilities. The weekly class is led by instructors who are trained, mentored, and coached by our founder Luca Patuelli. The instructors support 15-20 students to meet self-defined goals through technical and artistic instruction tailored to their specific abilities. Students are empowered to co-create with instructors by choosing how they want to move and express themselves.
This project will create an opportunity for Inclusive Dance Class students to perform a 10-15 minute piece choreographed by Patuelli at our annual No Limits Festival in June 2026 to a majority French-speaking audience of 350 at the Maison de la culture Maisonneuve.
Soul of the City - Soul of the City Debut
Soul of the City is a new non-profit music festival dedicated to celebrating Montreal’s thriving yet underrepresented soul and R&B scene. The festival’s inaugural edition will take place August 13 –16, 2026 across the Suoni family of venues (Casa, Sala Rossa, Sotterenea), all within walking distance on St Laurent Boulevard. Soul of the City will platform artists from both the anglophone and francophone soul and R&B communities which are two scenes that have long flourished in parallel yet rarely intersect. Through live performances, DJ sets, and industry events, the festival will create an inclusive, bilingual space where artists and audiences can connect across linguistic and cultural lines.
Over its four days, the festival will present approximately eight separate shows and four daytime events. A focus will be placed on underrepresented and emerging voices, offering them exposure to new audiences and industry networks.
Youtheatre - Heartbeat Reverie
In 2022, our organization premiered Heartbeat Reverie, an eight-time META–nominated children’s play about a young boy who drifts into an expansive dreamworld while under anesthesia for a heart transplant. Created collaboratively by English- and French-speaking co-devisors and designers, the piece follows the boy’s epic journey through dreams that illuminate both the wonder of childhood and his fear of hospitals. Inspired by personal experiences and the courage of young children facing medical hardship, the play reveals a delicate world that blossoms with hope, imagination, and resilience in the face of uncertainty. His mother’s voice serves as a constant beacon—guiding him back toward the waking world where he receives his new heart.
The sole French performer originated the role in Centre Culturel NDG for English audiences and later reprised it at Maison Théâtre the following year. Building on this cross-linguistic foundation, our organization is now seeking support to recast and workshop the show with a professional dancer and to downsize the set for flexible, bilingual touring in smaller venues across Québec and Canada. A key goal is to present special bilingual performance for both English- and French-speaking young audiences simultaneously, giving them the unique opportunity to experience the story together and to mingle afterward within our accompanying audio-visual installation.