While in residence Whitney will create a zine called WritingWhileBlack: Unearthing Halifax through a Futuristic Lens, exploring and decolonizing stories of black folks past, present and future from Halifax, Africville and Dartmouth. The zine will contain interviews, visual art, poetry, and short pieces of non-fiction. Whitney plans to offer her creative writing workshop series Writing While Black in Halifax, Dartmouth and Africville to create space for black writers to share works and support one another in their artistic adventures.
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All past and upcoming residents are listed here. You can search by year or type of project, and select a name to learn more about their project.
2016
Toronto, ON
Whitney French is a writer, workshop facilitator, educator and a zinester of colour. Whitney’s art is to constantly merge the written word, storytelling, and intergenerational narratives alongside zine culture and other multimedias through an Afrofuturistic perspective. Whitney is most passionate about uncovering the erased histories of black folks in Canada. For seven years she has conducted workshops in schools, community centres, prisons and First Nation reserves. Whitney founded the nation-wide zine From the Root, dedicated to showcasing artistic works by women of colour in Canada.
Kijipuktuk /Halifax, NS
Lara Lewis is a 22 year old Mi'kmaq queer person raised off-reserve and living in Halifax. She is a graduate of theatre studies at Dalhousie University, and is taking her first steps to becoming a professional theatre artist, using her voice to tell stories of people whose are not usually told.
Lara Lewis will create a zine examining her communities and the intersections between them - queer folk, trans folk, the urban Mi'kmaq community, and independent theatre artists. Lara plans to record interviews with young Mi'kmaq, trans, and queer peers. The interviews will then be transcribed and formed into a loose narrative that will be incorporated with found images into a series of zines and possibly short plays.
Toronto, ON
Y. Abdulqadir and Sumaya Ugas will work on a short film/video project exploring the nuances of love and sisterhood within the context of black female friendship. The project, which ultimately explores and celebrates the warmth, depth, and resiliency of black female friendship and sisterhood as a grounding framework for our survival as marginalized folks, will be included in the publication of the second issue of our on-going zine project titled Somali Semantics.
Kijipuktuk /Halifax, NS
Delilah Saunders is an artist, activist and author. She has been highly involved in the political and grassroots efforts for a federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. The issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women has encompassed Delilah Saunders’ life after the murder of her sister, Loretta Saunders, in February 2014. Since then, it became her duty to educate the public and create change through various mediums.. Ann Denny is a social entrepreneur, writer, classically trained vocalist, intellectual, comedian, and theatrical artist. In 2012 she co-founded Youth Art Connection, a registered charity helping to create supportive conditions for youth artists in Nova Scotia to grow as engaged artists and citizens. She creates collaborative music and drama pieces with artist led organizations such as Circus of the Normal.. Thomas Niles is an actor, theatre practitioner and theatre instructor who is interested in working in creating social justice theatre work. He also has worked with Zuppa theatre in Halifax and has experience teaching drama for Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth.
Delilah Terriak Saunders, Thomas Niles and Ann Helga Denny will create a reality-based intergenerational, multidisciplinary dramatic readings performance, based on the complex, real life stories of youth who are part of Inuit, Metis and First Nations communities. They will tell these stories through exploration of how music, oral storytelling, visual storytelling, natural settings, dance, spoken word and drama can all intersect to create artistic experiences that bring the emotional truth of the stories alive. The project is called "Oopik", which is the word for Owl in Inuktitut. Owl is Delilah's spirit animal, and it is an animal who symbolizes rebirth and new beginnings.
The team of three artists-in-residence will interview older Indigenous people about what their experiences were like growing up in Nova Scotia. Specifically, talking about connection to the land. Then they will interview younger Indigenous people, to be able to compare and contrast the experiences of younger generations. They plan on holding music and theatre workshops at Radstorm. They will showcase their multi-media performance piece at an open house at The Deanery in Ship Harbour, NS.
Vancouver, BC
Joshua M. Pawis-Steckley is an artist who is passionate about painting and screen-printing. Joshua is a person of both indigenous and non-indigenous background. Joshua’s art mostly focuses on animals totems, indigenous spirits and portrays personal introspective subjects.
Joshua will produce screen-printed poster series and accompanying zine outlining the historical relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in Canada and to raise awareness of the troubling current state of affairs today. The posters and zine will present grassroots initiatives that are already in place in some communities today that promote peaceful healing between the two groups and present ways we can work towards decolonizing within our own community to move forward and reconcile together.
Toronto, ON
Arti Mehta is a queer, genderqueer, South Asian, Buddhist, raised working class, Toronto-based, fibro femme who performs everything from politicized Bollywood burlesque to multi-media performance art. Arti’s performance employs video, animation, prose and movement to express themes of disability, somatics, spirituality, trauma, intergenerational trauma, epigenetics, sexual abuse, race, class, gender and sexuality/kink.
In residence Arti will create a weighted quilt. Through fiber arts Arti will explore the themes of disability, labour, sexuality and interdependence.
Montreal, QC
Sarah Ayton is coming to the RadStorm Residency to take the time to explore different processes for music making. She will work on a sound project as both a process and a listening tool to help deal with Mental Health Stuff (like anxiety), working from collected sounds and experiences of the ocean, which will be shared on a tape with screen-printed packaging. While in Halifax she will lead a workshop on songwriting, improvisation, and performance through singing for girls, women, queers, trans* and genderqueer youth and adults. She is planning to host and play an all-ages show with other local performers.
Montreal, QC
Jilted X is a queer, femmegore, mallgoth duo featuring Tiffany Paige and Esther Splett. These two obnoxious baby hags sing, coo and wail in agony over a wall of distorted harp riffs, crackling synth vibrations, textural samples and punishing drums beats.
In residence, Jilted X will produce a new performance and zine, both exploring the iconic ‘hysterical woman’ as seen in modern-day Soap Operas, Pop music and Reality TV. Their work will include drawings, collage, self-portraiture, costumes, audio samples, reenactments and texts based on their personal emulation of stereotypically negative feminine archetypes. At the end of their residency, Jilted X will host a collaborative event, which will include experimental performances, cupcakes and the launch of their new zine!
Montreal, QC
Olivia Dumas is a member of the Prisoner Correspondence Project - a collective based out of Montreal that seeks to support queer/trans inmates.
In residence Olivia will assemble a zine by and for HIV positive inmates offering information, resources and support. Olivia is currently collecting submissions and will spend the time in residence producing this zine.
2015
Montreal, QC
Kama is a mixed-race black/brown working class trans femme grassroots arts organizer. Kama spent most of life in Mauritius, before moving to India, and then to Ontario and now resides in Montreal. La Makerel uses public intervention as performance art in addressing displacement, race, gender, class and colonial trauma.
In residence Kama will be creating a screen-printed and hand painted art-installation piece that is an armour that celebrates and honours femmes of color resistance. This proposal is part of a bigger ongoing project that will run from March-September 2015. This project identifies femme of color resistance, particularly trans femme of color resistance through history and across generations, and through spirituality and everyday living as modes of resistance to white supremacy, heteropatriarchy and colonialism. Recently, Kama has been working on a series of poetic and story-telling pieces that seek to reclaim ancestral and spiritual understandings of gender from the colonial hand.
Montreal, QC
Kai Cheng Thom is a transwoman of Cantonese descent and a third-generation settler on Turtle Island. Kai is a child of the railroad, le chemin de fer, the fire horse. Her ancestors’ bones were pounded into the iron spine of the colonial nation state. Kai is a writer, spoken word artist, community worker, and therapist-in-training who resides in Montreal.
Kai will work on a storytelling zine titled Loving the Borderline while in residence. Loving the Borderline is a project rooted in Kai's own life. The zine touches upon several interlinked themes including: intergenerational trauma, migration, madness, and gendered violence. As a community worker, Kai believes these issues are both widespread and intimately connected; as a survivor, Kai believes that activist circles are past due for a frank discussion about them; and as a writer, Kai hopes that personal and collective healing can begin through the telling of stories.
New Paltz, NY
Kate Larsen is a 28 year old woman living in the Hudson Valley of New York. Kate has been making and self-publishing personal zines, as well as playing music in different projects for over a decade. Kate's zines deal with issues pertaining to living with chronic illness (multiple sclerosis specifically), queer identity, and learning to give and accept support.
As our resident artist Kate will create a short-run of a bundled printed personal zine and new original music release.
New Orleans, LA
Vanessa Adams is a queer print-maker, zine-maker and artist from New Orleans. In 2009 Vanessa helped found a collectively-run community art space, the New Orleans Community Printshop. Vanessa has been intimately involved in facilitating the growth of programming and managing operations ever since.
While in residence, Vanessa plans to finish the second issue of Other Worlds, a collaborative zine project through futuristic utopian / dystopian queer and trans comics. Vanessa will organize a zine art show centred on Queer Futures—culling from Anchor Archive’s collections. As well, Vanessa will host a workshop to create a collaborative silkscreen fortune telling art object.
Philadelphia, PA
Robin is a radical queer silk screen artist who lives in West Philly and is passionate about education and collective housing.
Robin’s project while here is to create a biographical zine and poster about revolutionary activist and organizer Grace Lee Boggs. Robin believes it is important to connect with older generations of activists to learn from their experience and this will be at the heart of Robin's project.
Toronto, ON
Clementine and Geoff are both writers and thinkers. They ask questions.
Clementine and Geoff want to produce a zine addressing some of their questions on intoxication culture, sober spaces, harm reduction, disability justice, addiction, community and how these things fit together.