CKAF PROJECT GRANTS

K-TOWN Showdown Dance Battle supports, expands and celebrates hip hop culture in Kingston and the surrounding areas. Now entering its third year, the K-TOWN Showdown offers a yearly weekend of dance consisting of high-energy dance skills and educational elements for dancers aged 12 and up. All styles are welcome in the 1v1 knockout dance battle, judged by 3 established dance professionals. A series of dance workshops will be conducted by local dance collectives on the Sunday following the battle, geared towards youth, teens, and adults at all levels.

The Ground UP Dance Festival is Kingston’s first annual festival for professional dance. The festival provides a platform for community building through movement experimentation, collaboration, and accessibility. Funding will support three layers of programming: mainstage performances at Lake Ontario Park; second stage programming at the Baby Grand Theatre; and community outreach, educational engagements, and workshops facilitated by Movement Market Collective.

Airwave YGK supports local artists in experimenting with new ideas, collaborating, and performing newly created work using CFRC’s studios and platforms. Airwave YGK includes paid 2 and 3-day artist residencies for local musicians and artistic collaborators; an Artist in Residence Talkback broadcast and podcast series; a creative and participatory workshop series; and a capstone live venue performance.

FOLDA broadens the discussion about digital performance aesthetics and poetics by presenting artworks that epitomize innovation, risk and engagement. FOLDA includes two main activities: a presentation series and the StartUp professional development and networking series. The StartUp offers participants hands-on experience with emerging technologies, while workshops and artist talks explore access, aesthetics, and digital technology.

Many Moons Events is a collective that fosters safe and inclusive music events, creating welcoming environments for diverse performers and community members. The project is a concert series of eight events, each a curated and collaborative experience. The series will include special showcases such as an Indigenous music night, a full day electronic festival, and “Slow Dance,” the annual queer friendly fake prom featuring queer, trans, and nonbinary performers and DJs.

Melos Choir & Period Instruments performs music from the 6th to the 18th centuries using historically informed performance practices. Light in the Dark II highlights the theme of redemptive light arising from the darkest season, contrasting Western and Eastern Christian, Sephardic Jewish, Arabic (Muslim) and Persian music from the 4th to the 18th centuries. Songs will be performed in seven languages: Latin, French, Romanian, Armenian, Ladino, Arabic, and Farsi.

Providence: A site-specific theatre performance is a play centred around the K&P railway, set in 1875 the day before the railway opens. A cast of five presents a play about immigrants from Ireland and Scotland who worked on the K&P Railway. The play will be staged on a short stretch of the original K&P Railway tracks.

The Seniors Theatre Club caters to the distinctive needs of older adults, providing them with an avenue for both dramatic expression and social interaction. The initiative is driven by the primary objectives of addressing social isolation, and facilitating and broadening creative expression opportunities for seniors. The Seniors' Theatre Club will include workshops, play rehearsals, and theatrical productions.

Skeleton Park Arts Festival strives to bring together artists from a range of disciplines to present unique and collaborative artistic experiences in a variety of alternative venues while helping to increase community engagement and neighbourhood pride. The festival connects different demographics and communities through a variety of free multi-arts programming that prioritizes local artists in music, literature, dance, film, fine arts, craft, and theatre.

Testify is a 40-minute documentary about the lives and experiences of formerly incarcerated women who were imprisoned at the Prison for Women in Kingston, from the events leading to incarceration, through incarceration and release, to their lives today. Testify is produced by the Prison for Women Memorial Collective and directed by emerging Kingston-based Cree filmmaker Dakota Ward. The documentary will be released on the 25th anniversary of the Prison for Women’s closure and premiere at the Screening Room on Prisoners Justice Day with a panel discussion.

This project centres around the story told in the Baroque opera The Dragon of Wantley. A narrator will tell the story while the Kingston Baroque Consort plays music from the 1737 comic opera. The performance will be accompanied by original art created by Colton Fox projected above the orchestra, depicting the major scenes of the story. Colton Fox will also lead a free Draw Your Own Dragon workshop prior to the performance.

The Juvenis Festival is Blue Canoe’s annual multidisciplinary youth arts festival – one of the few in the country – offering opportunities for youth to explore and grow artistic skills through free participation in theatrical productions, events, and workshops. Juvenis will feature up to six youth-led projects over two weeks, offering a variety of access points for artists aged 30 and under of all backgrounds.

The Lost Birds is a project by the vocal ensemble The Isabel Voices based around the themes of climate change and environmental conservation. The project includes 3 elements: the production of a concert at the Isabel featuring a performance of The Lost Birds, a pre-concert talk and smaller interjections throughout the performance by Dr Claudia Holgate, and partnerships with local schools to develop an environmental awareness campaign featuring poster presentations of endangered birds by grade 2 and 4 students.

White Pine Travels is a temporary public artwork to be installed on the Broom Factory lands in June 2025. The concept for the project is to design a mobile architectural pavilion that accommodates film screenings, workshops, a party and a library, transforming the site into a hub of collective activities which explore the interplay between forests, land use, art, and ecology. CKAF funds will support the creation and presentation of the project in Kingston during a week-long installation before it travels to Algonquin Provincial Park where it will decompose.