GrantLab 2026/27: Resourcing Artistic Capacity

Resourcing Artistic Capacity

GrantLab 2026

Part 1 – Fall 2026
Building the Application: Vision, Structure, and Submission

Tuesdays and Wednesdays November 10 - December 14, 2026

Part 2 – Winter 2027
Building the Career: Sustainability, Relationships, and Growth

Tuesdays and Wednesdays January 5 - February 9, 2027

Intro by Sid Ryan Eilers 

For twenty-seven years, I have lived inside the real conditions of making dance and performance work: working for other choreographers, creating my own choreography, founding ad hocs and not-for-profits, touring, administering, fundraising, teaching, organizing, and dreaming. I know the systems we move within are imperfect, often harmful, and shaped by forces that do not always value artists or bodies. We name that. And then we refuse* ( see note below on this) to let it be the center of our attention. 

I have always believed the fringes are where real transformation and the future are woven. Independent artists, small companies, ad hocs, and scrappy collectives are where innovation, cultural rupture, and world-changing ideas begin. Every human is an artist, and artists are entrepreneurs. This is political. This is spiritual. This is a way of living in the world that requires (truly demands) devotion, clarity, and craft.

Resourcing Artistic Capacity exists because I want artists to skip the years I spent fumbling alone. I want you to build the life and the work you are dreaming of. I want a world filled with visionary people making visionary things.

I began my career in 2000, working as an independent artist, founding ad hocs and not-for-profits, creating my own work, collaborating with others, and learning how to sustain a life in the arts from the inside. I have mentored independent artists over several years, supporting both their creative and administrative development, and have seen them go on to secure funding and build their own work.

My artistic work spans creation, production, touring, community engagement, and education, built project by project over time. Since 2014, I have secured public funding across municipal, provincial, and federal levels, returning to the same councils and presenters again and again, building relationships through practice, trust, and follow-through.

It has never been my goal to be mainstream**. I am called to create and exist in the fringes.

Rejection, burnout, and periods of real difficulty have been part of this path. I have learned how to continue, adapt, and build a practice that is sustainable over time. I have taken many courses in arts administration, often taught by administrators rather than artists, or by entrepreneurs outside of the arts, leaving gaps between theory and lived practice.

I was hesitant to develop this offering. Through years of trial and error, and through supporting other artists, I recognized that I hold a specific knowledge and perspective: I know how to navigate systems while staying rooted in artistic integrity. When artists I mentored began receiving major grants, it confirmed that this knowledge is transferable.

GrantLab is grounded in this lived experience. It is shaped by the ongoing work of sustaining mental health, cultivating an empowered mindset, trusting intuition, staying rooted in artistic practice, and maintaining an embodied presence, even when much of the work happens at a computer.

It translates what I have learned through years of writing, producing, and sustaining work into tools that support artists in building creative lives that are viable, self-directed, and alive.

This practice teaches you how to write grants, yes - more than that, it teaches you how to articulate your voice, claim your worth, build independence, and step into artistic leadership with agency and passion.

Resourcing Artistic Capacity does not exist to rehearse what is broken.
It exists to resource your capacity.

Your capacity to daydream.
Your capacity to be in awe with yourself.
Your capacity to recognize your artistic intelligence while naming oppression honestly and redistributing power responsibly.
Your capacity to participate in future-forward cultural leadership through creativity and practice.

We are interested in what allows an artist to sustain a creative life materially, creatively, relationally, and spiritually. We focus on building clarity, skill, confidence, and agency so you can move through existing structures without being defined by them, and help shape new ones through practice, leadership, and imagination.

Resourcing Artistic Capacity is about learning how to hold your work, time, energy, and collaborations with intention. Grant writing is one tool. Administration is another. Mindset, boundaries, pacing, and discernment matter just as much, if not more. 

We do not centre scarcity. We centre possibility.
We do not fixate on what is failing. We practice what can be built.
We do not wait for permission. We develop the capacity to lead.

This offering is for artists who want to make meaningful work, build sustainable lives, and participate in the transformation of the field - not through burnout or compliance, but through clarity, devotion, and practice.

REFUSAL:

*By refusal, I mean seeing the current reality clearly and refusing to believe it is the only reality available to us. We lean toward slightly better conditions, appreciate what is already working, generate an audacious vision for the future, and take one tiny step toward it. We experiment, fail, adjust, learn, and try again. Failure is part of the practice.

Through my life experience and my ongoing testing of this practice, I know that my internal attitude and perspective literally shape my immediate reality. They shape the language I use, the choices I make, what I notice, and what I believe is possible. I cultivate that internal orientation intentionally.

For example, growing up in ballet, I received negative feedback about the appearance of my body. At the same time, I felt an undeniable internal calling toward choreography and performance-making. I chose to trust that calling. If this was the work I was called to do, then this was the body with which to do it. My body did not need to conform to someone else's ideal in order to fulfill its creative purpose.

I came to understand these inner truths my intuition. I understand my intuition as divine, connected to what I playfully call GUS: God, Universe, Source. I could go on and on about this orientation to the world, but what matters here is that people who work with me understand it: the internal, spiritual, and imaginative life is not separate from the work. It is part of how we create anything. We imagine what does not yet exist, move toward it, fail, listen, adjust, and continue creating.

MAINSTREAM

** By mainstream, I mean the dominant systems and ways of working that many independent artists intentionally choose to operate outside of. Working at the fringes can create an opportunity to question rather than reproduce the patriarchy, capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fatphobia, and other systems of oppression that are embedded in many established institutions. Independent artists, entrepreneurs, and small business owners are culture-makers, and our relative independence can give us extraordinary freedom to imagine, experiment, fail, question, and build differently.

That freedom also comes with responsibility. It asks us to examine not only what we are making, but why we are making it, whose stories we are telling, and what assumptions or systems we may be reproducing through the work.

For example, a filmmaker once hired me to support their grant writing. They were white and of European ancestry and were determined to make a film centred on an Asian superhero. As we worked, I repeatedly asked them to articulate their relationship to the story, why they felt called to tell it, and what informed their approach beyond its commercial potential. I could not get them to meaningfully engage with those questions. I ultimately chose not to continue working with them because I could not effectively support the project as it was being conceived, nor did I believe they could build a compelling grant application.

Program Details
Every Tuesday for 6 weeks, beginning November 10, 2026

All sessions take place online via Zoom

Tuesdays - Lecture/Lab (online, recorded & shared with a link that lasts for 6 months)
7:30 to 9:00 pm EST

Wednesdays - Q&A (online)
8:00 to 9:00 pm EST

All Labs are recorded and shared within 24 hours (Q&A sessions are not shared)

Cost
$100.00 for Part 1 

$175.00 for both Part 1 and Part 2

GrantLab is for artists across disciplines including visual arts, music, dance, theatre, performance, and media arts who have completed rigorous training, are building an emerging or established practice, and are ready to expand with the tools, structure, and support to sustain a creative life rooted in sensitivity, rigour, and pleasure. 

Fall 2026 - Winter 2027
Resourcing Artistic Capacity
Making a Life in Creativity

Resourcing Artistic Capacity is not only about writing grants. It is about resourcing yourself as an artist to sustain a creative life with clarity, agency, and imagination. Each session builds capacity rather than chasing perfection. We move from articulation to action, from vision to structure, from effort to discernment.

Week / LAB 1 - Tuesday November 10th
Orientation: Resourcing Yourself as an Artist
You are a brilliant artist with something to say. This lab situates grants and other resources within a larger ecosystem of advocacy, livelihood, and leadership. We will explore what these resources are, who offers them, how they function, and how they can support independence rather than define it.

We will hold the role of the artist as an active community member: one who accesses resources and helps shape them. This includes understanding how public arts funding operates, why it matters, and how artists can participate in sustaining and strengthening the systems that support creative work.

Week / LAB 2 - Tuesday November 17th
Artistic Identity: Statement, Mission, Vision, Values
Clarifying your “why”. Naming your truth. Articulating the values and questions that inspire your work so every application, collaboration, and decision is anchored in coherence. 

We will develop your artist statement, craft biographies for different contexts, and build a clear, comprehensive curriculum vitae that can be adapted as needed. 

Week / LAB 3 – Tuesday November 24th

The Project: Vision, Time, and Relationships

What is the bold, unhinged, delicious vision you secretly hold? Not just what you want to make, but why now, why you, and what this project asks you to become as an artist.

This session brings vision into form. We will translate ideas into time, space, and relationships exploring work plans, potential collaborators, and the rhythms of creation. How do projects live inside calendars, bodies, and communities? How do you choose collaborators with intention, and build processes rooted in trust, and flow,with  clear boundaries?

Week / LAB 4 - Tuesday November 31st

Budgeting as Empowerment
Money as a tool for agency rather than lack. How to budget clearly, ethically, and expansively. This session… asks for what your work actually requires. 

Week / LAB 5 – Tuesday December 8th 

Impact & Support Materials: Letting the Work Speak

Art as transformation. This session explores how to articulate the impact of indie, weird, political, spiritual, and experimental work without flattening it or performing relevance. We will consider how to name why the work matters while staying true to its complexity.

We will also focus on shaping support materials: videos, images, writing samples, and letters, that feel alive and legible. These materials should invite encounters, in place explaining the work.  The session will include strategies for selecting and framing these materials, as well as developing and creating approaches to pitching projects to presenters.

Week / LAB 6 –Tuesday December 15th
Revision & Submission: Care, Completion, and Release

Refining your work within the context of applications. This session focuses on editing for clarity, rhythm, and breath - shaping language so it remains alive and legible without overworking or diminishing its integrity. We will explore how to care for the reader while staying true to the work, and how to recognize when something is complete.

We will also move through the final stages of submission: portals, timelines, and final checks. Emphasis will be placed on practicing steadiness, breath, and trust, approaching submission as an act of completion and release rather than a measure of self-worth.

Part 2

Week / LAB 1 (Session 7) – Tuesday January 5th 

After the Application: Continuity and Audience as Relationship

Letting go. Resetting energy. Tracking learnings. This session marks the transition out of the application cycle and into ongoing artistic life, recognizing that submission is one chapter within a long arc of practice.

From this place, we turn toward the audience as a relationship. How do you communicate your work, invite people in, and build sustained connections over time? We will explore approaches to sharing your work that feel aligned, reciprocal, and sustainable.

Week / LAB 2 (8) - Tuesday January 12th
Collaboration Tools, Agreements, and Mediation
Making art is intense. Tools for communication, boundaries, conflict navigation, and shared agreements so collaborations can be sustainable and human.

Week / LAB 3 (9) - Tuesday January 19th
Financial Stewardship: Managing Budgets and Preparing for Taxes
Practical systems that reduce stress and increase confidence. How to track money, prepare for taxes, and understand cash flow without overwhelm.

Week / LAB 4 (10) - Tuesday January 26th
Fundraising Beyond Grants
Grants are one resource, not the only one. Exploring fundraising as a constellation of relationships, storytelling, trust, and imagination.

Week / LAB 5 (Session 11) – Tuesday February 2nd
Structures & Professional Development: What Holds You Over Time

When projects grow, structures matter. This session explores when incorporation or formal structures make sense, what they enable, and the responsibilities they bring.

Alongside this, we will consider professional development as an ongoing practice. Careers expand and contract - choose growth opportunities, rest cycles, and redirections with discernment. Build a path that is both sustainable and responsive to change.

Week / LAB 6 (Session 12) - Tuesday February 9th

Living the Work: Capacity, Practice, Continuity
Making work, earning income, tending your body, sustaining relationships, and staying in the field. Capacity over hustle. Practice over perfection. Celebration of completion!