currently the artist in residence for the Yukon chapter of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS).Nicole lives in Whitehorse on the traditional territory of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council. She has shown work across Canada, the US and in Norway.
Acting for Climate Montréal’s mission is to work towards a more
sustainable future by combining performing arts and environmentalism.
To achieve this, the group reimagines the way their art is practiced to find concrete solutions to environmental challenges.
The River Clyde Pageant envisions a world where sustained encounters between community, art and ecology spark transformation and wonder. Where creative, joyful disruptions arise through attention to people and place; where strong communities lead with generosity and are rooted in the land. Here, people discover their unlimited potential through collaborative creativity, and inclusive communities are learning and evolving our collective histories.
Laura Barron is a musician, writer, facilitator and community artist whose 30-year career as a flutist has brought her from the Yukon to New Zealand, including solo appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and several performances at Carnegie Hall. She now harnesses her experience as a performer and teacher in her role as the Founder /Executive Director of Instruments of Change. This Vancouver-based non-profit leads numerous community arts initiatives that engage with incarcerated women in Canada, at-risk youth in India, educators in Zambia, and many other diverse groups. Here, she has found her greatest reach and impact designing experiences that empower underserved and often marginalized individuals to become instruments of change in their own lives as they find their own creative voices. Most meaningfully, she started the Vancouver branch of Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project, where she works with single mothers escaping violence, to co-create original songs for their children. Always striving for relevance in her work, she guides young artists to find intersections between their talents, passions and social concerns in ICASC’s Futures:forward initiative, as she did on the faculties of the Universities of OR, WI & N. AZ. She also facilitates climate action art projects for the Conservation Council of New Brunswick’s Harm to Harmony initiative, out of which her composition, Come Home – an ancient forest lullaby, emerged from a collaborative lyric-writing process that she led with tree activists across Canada. Laura accepts numerous public speaking invitations to share principles and best practices in Arts for Social Change. She is also a frequent blogger, most recently about artistic responses to the pandemic, globally, in These Adagio Days. And she brings all of her professional experiences together in her new writing project, Key Changes, a novel based on the healing power of music.
Eveline Kolijn is a printmaker and installation artist. Her interest in natural history and concern for the environment were fostered by growing up in the Caribbean, where she experienced both the beauty and demise of coral reefs. Eveline received a MA in cultural anthropology from the Leiden University in the Netherlands in 1986 and a BFA from the Alberta College of Art+ Design in 2008 including the Governor General’s Award for academic achievement. She has participated in national and international exhibitions and residencies, public art projects and community engagement. She has been published in various scientific publications. She is an instructor at the Alberta University of the Arts School of Continuing Education. In 2018, she joined the Energy Futures Lab as a Fellow and in 2019, she received the AUArts Alumni Legacy award.
Currently designing a project of radio drama miniseries with a companion interactive web platform. Focusing on solarpunk narratives, this broadcast/podcast’s episodes are set 15 years ahead in a radically refashioning Canadian urban-scape. Anglophone, Francophone, Allophone, and Indigenous community members liaison across Montreal and Ottawa to continue adapting with climate-resilient housing, localization of food, energy, and healthcare resource generation and recycling operations, and community governance practices to address fair distribution and trade agreements. This “speculative realism” story crafting includes humour, sober and optimistic projections of near-future potentials to build toward. Covering a year of neighbours extending a network of residential/industrial eco-complexes, the project aims for collaborative episode building with scriptwriters and actors. To represent realistic urban futures, a majority of cast and crew will also be disabled and/or racialized.
Artistic Director of Re:Current Theatre, which is dedicated to creating work that reimagines gathering. As of Spring 2022, he is currently working on ‘Brian and Jackie’s 100 Neoliberal Climate Change Crusade Plays to Conquer the Malaise of Your Fears to Do Anything in the Age of Climate Change.’ It is a satirical performance about truth, fear, and absurdity in the age of climate change. His touring work ‘New Societies’ is an interactive theatrical experience to create your ideal society in a mega-game of collaboration, competition, and potential.
Danielle Smith is self-taught mixed media fiber artist from Fredericton, New Brunswick. She received Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Forestry from the University of New Brunswick. She is the owner of Thistle Cove Fiber Studio.
Danielle taught herself felting in 2018 while living in the UK. Danielle uses art as a mechanism to engage communities in conversations around the impacts of climate change, loss of biodiversity, and the importance of connecting people to nature. She is a juried member of Craft NB and a Member of the Conservation Council’ of New Brunswick’s “From Harm to Harmony Artist Collective”. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions with the aim of creating awareness about the specific challenges that climate change poses in New Brunswick and inspire her community to adopt more thoughtful practices that will mitigate the negative impacts of climate change.
Émerise LeBlanc-Nowlan, retired from her career as a mental health nurse, obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Université de Moncton and received the Pascal Certificate of Excellence.
She has participated in several painting and textile art exhibitions in Ottawa, Bouctouche and Moncton. She also managed her own art gallery, Artgora, for 10 years.
Author and illustrator under the artist’s name Emy, the Acadian has published five children’s books with Bouton d’or Acadie. She has received the iParenting Media Award and the Dr. Marilyn Trenholme Counsell Award.
Since 2005, Émerise has participated in several school animation projects combining art and writing in schools in the Moncton, Edmundston, Dartmouth, Montreal, and Ottawa regions.
Director of the Banque d’Art Populaire Acadien collections at the Kent Museum in Bouctouche.
Member of Gallery 12, AAAPNB (Association Artiste Acadienne Professionnelle Nouveau Brunswick), CARFAC, TIGHR (The international Guild of Handhooking Rugmakers), and les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo
My visual language is interdisciplinary, informed by placemaking and a consciousness of what we have come to understand about our being in the world. I develop these thoughts through reading texts about human/environmental relationships, and immersive field research experiences. I focus on riparian zones where I sketch, paint and photograph micro-environments. I further explore the relational enchantment I have with these spaces in my studio through drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and assemblage.
The Climate Art Web (CAW-WAC) is a grassroots network that brings together climate artists living in northern Turtle Island (Canada).
