Companies Offering Professional Development in the Arts

Centre for Indigenous Theatre (Full Time and Summer Programs):

• The Centre for Indigenous Theatre (CIT) offers training in the performing arts to students of Indigenous ancestry. The CIT’s goal is to develop and implement educational programs that promote and foster an understanding of Indigenous theatre while providing the highest calibre arts training to Indigenous students from across Canada. The Centre for Indigenous Theatre offers a three-year, post-secondary conservatory program as well as introductory summer intensive programs.

De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group (National Aboriginal Arts Animator Program):

• An Arts Animator is a professional artist with a broad range of skills, experiences, and resources, that can be used to ‘animate’, (put into motion) artistic activity in a community. This program is based on the independent studies model. After receiving the foundation elements, each student decides their own curriculum based on their existing and desired skills. A majority of the student’s time will be spent in the studio, in workshops, and out in the communities. Upon graduation, students are able to design, deliver, and evaluate arts programming across a broad range of applications, and have honed their skills in an area of performing arts that is of particular interest to the student as an independent artist.

Full Circle First Nations Performance (training programs and workshops):

• The Aboriginal Ensemble Training Program provides an opportunity for participating artists – both professional and pre-professional – to learn a variety of skills and become part of Full Circle’s Ensemble. This program is ideal for Aboriginal artists who wish to develop and practice their art in a way that appreciates cultural traditions. This exciting collaborative work aims at developing Aboriginal artists and practices that embody, celebrate, and share an understanding of their peoples’ traditions. Current participants have been asked to commit themselves to a two-year focus of training that stresses the development of artists who have a strong cultural consciousness coupled with a self-authorized creative technique. The training involves a variety of disciplines and methods with activities ranging from learning traditional chanting, storytelling and dancing from different nations, to cutting edge techniques in physical training, voice, and movement, to field trips that involve hands-on traditional life skills’ experience
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• Creation Stories Workshop explores music development with Traditional Squamish singer Sahplek (Bob Baker), new music to be commissioned by musical artist Leela Gilday.
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• Nchu’7mut engages cultural leaders, teachers and elders to impart Aboriginal “nexwniw” (teachings) for the development of the company and its varied programs.
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• Manitoba Theatre for Young People plays a key role in the development and delivery of theatre-in-education programs that concentrate on using theatre as an educational tool to illustrate and express ideas about social issues. The company also operates a Theatre School where over 1,500 children and teens learn the art and craft of theatre and related disciplines.

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