North Vancouver Recreation and Culture Commission

Since 2019, NVRC’s artist residency program has supported arts and culture projects and artistic development in North Vancouver.

The program provides unique opportunities for emerging and established artists from diverse disciplines, cultures and backgrounds to discover, create and produce new work or develop existing projects.

Between 2019 and 2023, the program has supported over 22 artists. Past projects have been in the areas of visual art, dance, digital art, music, environmental art and storytelling. Artists receive financial support and space to work on their projects.

A unique feature of the program is that it offers opportunities for artists to work in the community, develop arts-based engagement activities and deliver creative projects that generate meaningful connections.

During their residency, artists are installed in spaces in the City or District of North Vancouver for anywhere from two to eight months. The artists then connect with this environment, and give back to community and help foster connection through workshops, artist talks, performances and other activities.

Contributing to the vibrancy of our neighborhoods, the program seeks to inspire participation and relationship-building where the process of creating art together acts as a catalyst for individual and community engagement.

NVRC issues an open call for the artist residency program in November each year. The application deadline is mid-January.

Artists working in all disciplines can apply, including, but not limited to: choreographers, composers, dance artists, digital media artists, graphic artists, multi-media and multi-disciplinary artists, musicians, performance artists, poets, spoken-word artists, theatre artists, video artists and writers.

Information Sessions

Staff will advertise and conduct a short series of information sessions online via MS Teams. If you prefer to have a phone conversation, you may request this by emailing artist-residencies@nvrc.ca

Potential applicants will be encouraged to attend an information session before applying to the NVRC Artist Residency Program.
- Monday, Dec 11, 2023 at 12:30 – 1:00pm
- Wednesday, Jan 3, 2024 at 12:30 – 1:00pm
Please RSVP to artist-residencies@nvrc.ca and a MS Teams link will be sent to you.

To apply for the artist residency program, please complete the following steps:

Step 1: Review the program guidelines
- Read the artist residency program guidelines.
Step 2: Complete the application form
- All proposals must include a completed application form.
- The application form requires a scanned or electronic signature.
- Review the application checklist on the last page of the application form and ensure that all supporting documents are complete and that they adhere to the specifications provided in the program guidelines.
Step 3: Submit your application package
- The next intake opens in November 2023 with the application deadline in mid-January 2024.
- The application form and all application materials must be submitted as email attachments to artist-residencies@nvrc.ca.
- The maximum acceptable email size, including all required attachments, is 5MB.
- Applicants may submit their image and video files in a second email if required. However, the entire application package must be contained in a maximum of two emails.
Questions
If you have any questions about the program or application process, please contact artist-residencies@nvrc.ca.

Upcoming Workshops

Check back for information on workshops hosted by NVRC's artists in residence.

Meet the artists

2023 artists in residence

Dolores Altin and Elvira Monteforte (aka Elvis and Lola) are public artists with a passion for environmental art. They make art that makes a difference and that's meant to be experienced in person. The art work is site-specific and often uses recycled and natural materials to create a sense of place. The artists strongly believe that art should be accessible to everyone, thus creating pieces that can be enjoyed by all.

Read our story about their artist in residence projects: Bugging out – artists in residence create willow sculpture insects

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Delores Atlin

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Elvira Monteforte
Artist bio

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My work is all about making experimental (mental and physical spaces) that spark curiosity and compassion to help bring about collaborative healing and visioning in the community. Making like this lets me live thousands of lives and stories within my own. It lets me stretch my creativity and stay a life-long learner. Working like this I also heal parts of myself around belonging.

The three most important things I want to communicate are hope, imagination and power. In which we always have the chance to re-imagine, learn and expand our models of community, knowledge and power to tap into collective strength and indigenous solutions generated with and by the people that live in the system.

As a multidisciplinary maker, I work with a lot of found objects.
Project details coming soon!

Artist bio

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Lori Goldberg was born and lives in Vancouver. She attended Langara College Fine Arts program, Ontario College of Art and Design and Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She is the recipient of many awards, including a Canada Council Grant, two Tony Onley Artist's Project Scholarship and the Vermont Artist Award.

Her work is in the collections of the Canada Art Bank, Contemporary Art Gallery, the City of Vancouver, Michael Audain private art collection and VGH Foundation. Major exhibitions include South Main gallery, Vancouver / Justine Barnike Gallery, Ontario / Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver / the KX Kunst Kampfnagel Gallery, Hamburg.

As an artist, Goldberg has always sought intersections with broader communities, developing collaborative and mutually instructive inquiries about how art can impact positive environmental changes. She has spearheaded socially engaged project in Akumal, Mexico, Governors Island, NYC, Vancouver and Squamish BC.

She served for three years as the Provincial Representative of C.A.R./F.A.C. a Canada-wide advocacy and education NPO. As well, she was a founding director of the Vancouver Salish Sea Artist Residency. Over the last two decades, Goldberg has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and frequently presented at Hollyhock on Cortes Island.
Nathan Lee’s Artist in Residency

During Nathan Lee’s artist residency with NVRC, he created a model of The Rookery, along with a step-by-step education guide for the community.

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Moodyville sawmill opened in 1863. The community of Moodyville was an early mill town and one of the first permanent European settlements in North Vancouver. While the population was multicultural, it was far from equal. By 1889 there were 160 men employed at the mill, 36 of whom were of Chinese descent. Produced as part of NVRC's Artist Residency program, this project explores the “Chinese Rookery,” an ethnic enclave on the lowlands of the site. Little is known about the lives and working conditions of the people that lived here. This model is an interpretation of the site conditions based on the available archival information.

Make Your Own Rookery

Build a scale model and discover for yourself what the area may have been like.
Artists Pierre Leichner and Johnny Trinh hosted 'Stories from the Kitchen' where over four sessions, chefs from the community offered demonstrations of foods from various cultures: Indigenous, Persian, Asian and Ukrainian.

Participants had an opportunity to taste and enjoy the dishes together. After the meal, the artist facilitators led discussions and story sharing. The food offered prompts to share memories, consider cultural significance and create new stories together as a community.

This series took place at Lions Gate Community Recreation Centre over four Thursday evenings from March 30 to April 20.
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Gemma Crowe
Gemma Crowe is a new media and movement artist exploring ways of knowing beyond cognition by encouraging a felt-sense through aesthetic affect. Her thesis research is concerned with the illusory potential of sound and the sensory apprehension of movement. Gemma will be continuing this research now, with the performance of sound through dance.
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Pattern Nation is a slow fashion sustainable clothing design brand, artist collective and creative platform for colourful humans run by cosmic partners and spouses Cyd Eva and Costa Besta and friend and artist Brianna Klassen. They create handmade one-of-a kind & small run ungendered street wear and accessories, interactive art installations called blobs, visual art and surface pattern designs, fashion films and photography, DJ & live music sets, events, workshops, collaborative projects and more. Their current work takes place on the stolen, unceded and traditional territories of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm people (Kwikwetlem) in Coquitlam BC and have previously worked and lived in Vancouver Canada (all), Durban and Cape town South Africa (Cyd & Costa) and Bangalore India (Bri).

2022 artists in residence

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Cara Guri is a visual artist based in Vancouver, BC. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University and has completed a painting residency at Columbia University. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Takao Tanabe Scholarship, the Brissenden Scholarship, and the Bishop’s Undergraduate Prize in Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and New York, NY. Recent exhibitions include The Reach Gallery Museum, Burrard Arts Foundation and the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie. She has also completed artist residencies with hcma, Burrard Arts, and The City of Abbotsford and was an artist with Vancouver Mural Festival.

In her current painting practice, Cara explores the relationship between identity construction and portraiture. Her works examine the transactional nature of portraiture: the information that is given to the viewer and that which is withheld. Through her paintings, she re-examines conventions and symbols that are found in historical portraiture by translating them into her current reality in a way that disrupts their original meaning and questions what it means to see and be seen.

Cara Guri's website
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Cath Hughes is a British and Canadian multi disciplinary visual artist, living and working with gratitude on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil Waututh nations. She holds a BFA from Oxford University, and an MA from London University as well as a Postgraduate Certificate of Education from Goldsmiths College and recently participated in the postgraduate painting correspondence course facilitated by Turps Art School. She has worked for many years in art and gallery education, including at Tate Modern and the National Gallery in London before immigrating to Canada in 2008. She now teaches at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Burnaby Art Gallery and the Shadbolt Centre.

Cath Hughes Art | Facebook
Cath Hughes' website
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CONTEXTURE is a noun that refers to an interwoven structure – a fabric. It is also the work of Nathan Lee. CONTEXTURE weaves together threads of place, history, culture, and ecology into playful, richly layered objects of art and design.

Nathan’s creative approach seeks to engage meaningful social and ecological concepts with humour and whimsy, while celebrating overlooked natural and cultural systems. His projects are built on a foundation of thorough research and layered with site-specific meaning. The end result is relevant and playful, profound and engaging.

Nathan Lee's website