Indian Summer Festival extends deadline for Culture Lab: Artist as Healer applications
Call goes out for South Asian artists for project funding of up to $45,000
Last year’s inaugural “artist as healer” Yogacharini Maitreyi.
Indian Summer’s Pawan Deol. Photo by The Portrait Sessions Photography
THE INDIAN SUMMER Arts Society has extended a call for applications for South Asian artists in Greater Vancouver for a project called Culture Lab: Artist as Healer.
People can apply for funding up to $45,000 by October 25, at 11:59 pm. The project supports a South Asian artist working in any medium or discipline “to collaborate with other artists, mentors, and medical and wellness communities to develop healing methodologies through art”.
The special project proposes societal healing in the face of systemic racism in the arts, as well as the health and wellness industries. The funding is meant for an artist (or a collective) to produce a final work engaging the community and inspiring other creatives and healthcare professionals to bridge the gap between art and healing. A jury will review all proposals.
The project launched last year, with Yogacharini Maitreyi selected as the Indian Summer Arts Society's inaugural “Artist as Healer”. Maitreyi conducted a five-month research and solutions lab, resulting in the creation of an educational documentary film, a public event, and a panel discussion with medical professionals from the Mindfulness Institute and Harvard Medical School at the annual conference of the Global Association of South Asian Physicians.
Dr. Arun Garg, Medical Director of the South Asian Health Institute with Fraser Health Authority and the former BCMA President, returns as a mentor and partner in the project. Garg is also a visiting professor in India at Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (S-VYASA).
"Societal healing is needed in almost every sphere of human life on the planet at this moment in time,” Pawan Deol, executive director of programming at Indian Summer Arts Society said in the announcement. “Healing and the arts have always been connected, and artists have so much knowledge to offer it's a great disservice to both healing and the arts to keep them perpetually separated as happens in the West.”
Potential applicants can find more information about the project here.
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