Kickstart Arts - disability arts & culture

Unique festival promotes work by filmmakers who have a disability

admin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:12:51 +0000

Wide Angle Media (WAM) Festival supporter Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion (BACI) interviews our own S. Siobhan McCarthy regarding this cutting edge event. Visit BACI’s blog to read the interview.

Switch United comes on board to support WAM

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:07:50 +0000

We are very excited to announce that Switch United has now joined us and will be a part of the Wide Angle Media Festival!!! We are so excited have Switch present a workshop for our film makers as a part of the Master Class Series during our festival.

Switch United
The Story Through Design™

Switch United is an independent Canadian studio that passionately explores interactive entertainment wherever it lives, online and offline. Specializing in multi-platform campaigns for entertainment and lifestyle related clients, the ‘creative sandbox’ recently amalgamated with branding leaders Fleming Design (est. 1983), bringing together a multi-disciplinary team passionate about great storytelling across mediums.

Whether it’s our recent work on interactive digital environments and multi-touch screens for the 2010 Olympics, our award-winning bicycle branding for Mountain Equipment Co-op, or our work bringing the vision of TV and film production companies to digital platforms, Switch United remains focused on working

at the intersections of motion and Flash design and applications, graphic design, environmental design, viral marketing and social media.

This scope and flexibility have provided the studio the opportunity to work with such industry-leading clients as OmniFilm, Brent Butt and Sparrow Productions, Nintendo of Canada, and Haddock Entertainment. The group was recently short-listed for the Banff World Television Awards’ Best Cross Platform Project for work on Ice Pilots NWT and won Judge’s Choice from Graphex for its MEC branding. If you’ve got a story to be told in an innovative way on multiple platforms, we’re up for the challenge.

BC Film + Media is our newest sponsor/ supporter of WAM

admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:37:38 +0000

Kickstart is very excited to announce that BC Film + Media is our newest sponsor of WAM. We are so very thrilled to have their support and look forward to presenting a fantastic festival. Please stay tuned for more details regarding our program, master classes, industry networking sessions, gala and ticket info

Announcing the Five Selected Commissions for WAM!

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:32:30 +0000

The very first Wide Angle Media (WAM) Festival is scheduled for March 22-25, 2012 and will feature short and feature-length films by filmmakers who are Deaf or disabled, as well as workshops for filmmakers and the general public. Click here for background info.

Co-producers Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion, Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture and posAbilities are very excited to announce the five winners of the WAM Short Film Commission contest!

Each winning filmmaking team will receive a $1,500 Cdn cash prize as well as a service package from William F. White International to assist in the creation of their film!

The commission competition was open to all Canadian filmmakers with a disability and the selected films are:

No Man’s Land- directed by Laurence Cohen and produced by David Cormican. Sanity for Beginners written and directed by Jan Derbyshire, Penguins- written and directed by Mathew Kowalchuk, Patience and Absurdity written and directed by sylvi macCormac, and School of Beauty- written by David Roche.

All five films have S. Siobhan McCarthy as their Executive Producer

The five films will be screened at WAM, March 22-25, 2012!

The Festival program will be announced and uploaded to this site by the end of January, so check back!

Music Saves 3

admin — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 01:20:37 +0000

The Vancouver Adapted Music Society and Shore 104.3 FM have released the third Music Saves video, a rework of Canadian rock band Crowbar’s , Oh What A Feeling. The video features many Vancouver musicians, including artists with disabilities Jim Byrnes, sylvi macCormac, Dave Symington, Rolf Kempf and Chin Injeti.

This latest video highlights music’s power to change lives! It blends a classic Canadian rock anthem with heartfelt messages from people whose lives have been touched by music.

Check out the video.

Remarkable Women 2012

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:16:43 +0000

Congratulations to Jan Derbyshire and sylvi macCormac, recently chosen as 2 of 12 women artists in the Remarkable Women: Honouring Women From Our Vancouver Communities poster series for 2012. Twelve posters of Remarkable Women from Vancouver will be produced as a unique way to remember, acknowledge, and honour women in our communities whose accomplishments highlight the important role women play in our daily lives. The posters will be available in January 2012. Those selected as Remarkable Women will be acknowledged at a reception to be held in conjunction with International Women’s Day on March 8, 2012.

Meanwhile, a BIG congratulations to Jan – a performer, playwright and comedian – and sylvi – a musician, composer, and soundscape artist – who have BOTH been proudly presented by Kickstart!

We know how to spot ‘em, and apparently so does the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, sponsors of the award.

More info on the award can be found here.

New VocalEye Season About To Begin!

admin — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:54:14 +0000

Following on a very successful first season – the first full season of live audio description for theatre offered in Canada – Kickstart is proud to announce VocalEye’s upcoming second season!

Along with our collaborating host venues, the Vancouver Playhouse, the Arts Club’s Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage and the Surrey Arts Centre, we invite you to find out more about the 13 shows on offer between October 2011 and August 2012!

Staff Benda Bilili Concert Cancelled

admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:26:30 +0000

We are very disappointed to announce that the September 19th Vogue Theatre concert of Congolese group Staff Benda Bilili has been cancelled.
The group was forced to cancel their entire North American tour, which had been scheduled to begin Sept 14 in Folsom, CA, due to issues with securing their U.S. Visas.

Check out this film promo anyway, and stay tuned for details of a special Vancouver Int’l Film Festival presentation on Friday, October 14th / 7:15pm at the VancCity Theatre in Vancouver.

Call to Filmmakers for BC’s First Disability Media Festival

admin — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 02:49:23 +0000

Kickstart is excited to announce the Wide Angle Media (WAM) Festival, the inaugural disability media festival featuring commissioned shorts, feature length films and workshops. Mark your calendar for March 22-25 2012, and check out the WAM page for more information!

We are presently putting a call out to all Canadian and international filmmakers with a disability to submit their films of any length, genre or topic to the Festival.

WAM COMMISSIONING PROJECT!
Kickstart’s WAM Festival is excited to commission 5 short films made by Canadian filmmakers with a disability. Each filmmaker must provide a package with the film’s synopsis, draft of the script, director’s vision, production team and their bios, preliminary budget and action plan. Five selected filmmakers will receive $1,500 cash prize, plus an equipment loan package from William F. White International, valued at $10,000. The commissioned films will be screened at the WAM Festival in Vancouver, March 2012.

Please see WAM page for submission deadlines between September 11 and October 7, 2011. Result notification date will be November 1, 2011.

PLEASE NOTE: All submissions for the Festival and for the Commission will only be accepted through Withoutabox.com. Acceptable formats are Microsoft Word, text files or PDFs. Nominal submission fees will apply.

For more information or to be a part of the Festival as a featured filmmaker, volunteer or audience member, please contact:

S. Siobhan McCarthy, Festival Producer
Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture
Phone: (604) 681 5788
Email: programs@kickstart-arts.ca

WAM Festival and Commissioning Project are proudly supported by:
The British Columbia Arts Council, Buggy Bag Mobility Accessories, Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion, the Canada Council for the Arts, City of Vancouver, National Film Board of Canada, PosAbilities, the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre, and William F. White International Inc.

Hiring Announcement and Introduction

admin — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 07:48:54 +0000

As the senior guy around Kickstart, it’s my privilege to post the first entry on our new blog. It’s both an important announcement and official introduction. We have hired S. Siobhan McCarthy, who many will know has been working on a limited basis since last Fall, on strategies to breathe life into the BC Regional Inclusive Arts Network. Siobhan will now also be learning the nuts and bolts of being an artistic director at Kickstart, through our new internship project. What’s really exciting is that Siobhan comes with a wealth of experience in both the theatre and filmmaking sectors locally and nationally, which makes her the perfect person to produce the upcoming WAM Festival!

Siobhan has already made her mark by encouraging us to “get with the program” in terms of social networking, blogging, etc. and we look forward to our future work with her on board. Welcome, Siobhan!

- Geoff McMurchy, Artistic Director