Calling all Toronto-based and Canadian-based artists!

Nuit Blanche Toronto is now accepting submissions to the Open Call Project program for the event's 12th edition, happening on September 30, 2017 from sunset to sunrise.

The Open Call submission deadline by email is 11:59 p.m. on Monday, December 19, 2016.

Applications are now being accepted. Further details, guidelines and the Open Call application form can be found at http://www.toronto.ca/nuitblanche.

Open Call Projects

The Open Call Projects program is an opportunity for artists to be guided and mentored by a Nuit Blanche Toronto curator and have a project produced and funded by the City of Toronto.

The impressive calibre and diversity of Open Call Projects featured at the event over the years includes artists such as: Ame Henderson, Brandy Leary/Anandam Dancetheatre, Eleanor King, Faith La Rocque, Kelly Mark, Labspace Studio, Rhonda Weppler & Trevor Mahovsky, VSVSVS and Workparty.

To mark Canada's 150th anniversary of confederation, Nuit Blanche Toronto has created an overarching theme for the entire 2017 event focusing on this major milestone in Canada's history as a nation, entitled Nuit Blanche 2017: Many Possible Futures. All participating Nuit Blanche Toronto 2017 curators have been encouraged to look forward to the many possible futures of Canada in their curatorial visions, working with artists to address notions of Identity and Nationhood. Possible perspectives include Migration, Displacement, Colonialism, Power and Privilege, Settlement, the Natural Landscape, Distance, Exploration, Adaptation, and Reconciliation.

This year the Open Call Projects will give up to four artists the opportunity to be part of two City-produced exhibitions.

The two exhibitions accepting Open Call submissions for 2017 are:

Taking to the Streets – For a Possible Future
Curator: Barbara Fischer

Streets are complex sites where pedestrian life meets car culture, where public and private intermingle, and where commerce and consumption, ostentation and privation are in daily exchange, if not confrontation. Taking to the Streets – For a Possible Future looks at the ways in which the 'street' as a medium has served the manifestation of social action and interrogation by artists, from graffiti to protest, conceptual interventions to public disruptions.

Barbara Fischer is the executive director/chief curator of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House and interim director of the University of Toronto Art Centre. She is also senior lecturer of Curatorial Studies in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto. She has curated numerous major exhibitions of contemporary art and its histories in galleries and museums across Canada and internationally. She was awarded the 2008 Hnatyshyn Award for Curatorial Excellence and was the commissioner of the Canadian Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009.

Dream Time: We All Have Stories
Curator: Karen Alexander

Dream Time: We All Have Stories focuses on the challenges and consequences of individuals and communities sharing urban spaces and places, together. Exploring themes of migration, memory, hybridity and transformation, the exhibition looks forward not toward a future which throws everything together into a magical multicultural melting pot, but rather one that sharply focuses on progressive ideas of nationality and inclusion through a series of interventions, investigations and explorations.

Karen Alexander is an independent film and moving image curator, advisor and researcher and has worked with and for the Royal College of Art, and the British Film Institute. She has acted as a consultant and programmer for a wide range of festivals institutions and galleries, including Film London, the Watershed Bristol, Tate, Birkbeck, Iniva, the Serpentine Gallery, The British Library and the ICA London. Her areas of expertise are UK artists’ film and video, feminist and post-colonial politics of representation, gender and sexuality. Karen was appointed Associate Fellow at Warwick University in the Film and Television Studies department in 2015 and has been a trustee of the London-based arts commissioning body Artangel since 2004.

Each curator will select one or two Open Call Projects for their exhibition in consultation with the City of Toronto. Funding and production support is provided by the City of Toronto.

The Open Call submission deadline by email is 11:59 p.m. on Monday, December 19, 2016.

Applications are now being accepted. Further details, guidelines and the Open Call application form can be found at http://www.toronto.ca/nuitblanche.