Meet the latest winners of Canada Council prizes

The Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music ($7,500) is a competition for Canadian composers that is designed to encourage the creation of new chamber music and to foster its performance by Canadian chamber groups.

The John Hirsch Prize recognizes new and developing theatre directors who have demonstrated great potential for future excellence and exciting artistic vision. Two $6,000 prizes are awarded every two years, one for each of the Anglophone and Francophone theatre communities.

It has travelled across Canada and abroad, including a tour to the acclaimed Tricycle Theatre in London, England. His production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist at the Soulpepper Theatre Company in 2015 won the Dora Award for best production. As the founding artistic director of Why Not Theatre, Ravi has established himself as an artistic leader for his inventive productions, international producing/collaborations and innovative producing models which are aimed to better support emerging artists to make money from their art.

You are known for being an activist and for your work with youth to bring about positive change through the arts. What do you think theatre as an art form can bring to youth at risk, and how can it better reach out to them?

The theatre (institutions) has become a place that has valued certain voices and experiences over others. As a result there are huge populations who feel excluded.

The theatre as an art has had major impacts on a community level, in schools, community centres, in the daily lives of individuals through storytelling. We know it plays a role in people's lives and that it has an incredibly powerful impact on building communities. I’ve personally seen that across Canada and internationally. However, major institutions are becoming less relevant due to the fact that they are becoming less and less inclusive, be it through ticket price, content on stages, or most importantly who the creative voices are. So the question isn't about what can theatre do for youth or any community – we know what it can do. The question isn't how can it better reach out to them either. The question is, what kind of stories do we want to value? And who do we let tell that story.

To answer your question, I want to celebrate two very different Toronto-based companies Mammalian Diving Reflex and Jumblies theatre (and I am sure there are more out there across the country). Both are working people from very different communities, young and old. They are doing incredible work giving a platform to other people (young and old) to be the creative driver of a different voice.

By using the body and its non-verbal potential as a driver of theatre creation, the physical aspect conveyed on stage is echoed in a sensory experience shared with the audience. When we emphasize gestures, actions, visuals, sound and text as the material, along with a given theme and a dramaturgy that is open to interpretation, the referents are sometimes very concrete and sometimes poetic, allowing the imaginations of the spectators to do the work.

For me, acknowledging the intelligence and ability of the audience to appropriate certain key aspects of the dramaturgy and participate is what makes theatre rich in interpretive possibilities for me. By leaving open avenues of meaning, without putting specific definitions into a situation or words into the mouths of the characters, readings can vary slightly and stimulate exchanges with the public. Spectators thus become directly involved in the meaning the work takes on. I make maximal use of the props, sometimes hardly anything and sometimes more substantial, to ensure that they are useful and meaningful in the dramatic development. I try to do a lot with a little to create the unexpected. I find constraints, whether dramatic, scenographic, auditory or physical, extremely stimulating, and they contribute both to what is happening on stage and to the audience, which then becomes empathic to these difficulties, developments and discoveries. Outside Canada, when language make for limitations or flagrant divergences of interpretation, this proximity with the public remains intact, as does the desire for exchange. This enriches my determination to share these reflections in the form of plays. The foibles of our societies make for a vast source of material with which we can create theatre. I dive in, armed with the imagination and dreams – and a few hard knocks and swift kicks!

The John Hobday Awards recognize outstanding established and mid-career arts managers in Canadian professional arts organizations. Each year two prizes ($10,000) are awarded for Professional Development and Renewal and Mentorship.

The arts offer a wealth of stories to share, and marketers have the daunting task to create that content and share it on multiple platforms.

This is a real challenge with very few professional development opportunities in arts marketing in Canada and arts marketers continue to struggle to share best practices and keep abreast of fast-paced changes in the digital world.

Marketers are now generalists and must be able to reach potential consumers of all ages by translating stories to the right audience. I need to continue to learn about content marketing, data collection and marketing analytics to be able to constantly adapt and change to choose the right message for the right audience in the right medium. It is crucial to have a formal way to exchange information with other arts administrators in the country and to have the senior marketers passing along their expertise to emerging talent.

What do you think is the most important skill needed now in arts advocacy? How do you think your mentorship with Kathleen Sharpe will help you to advance this skill?

Arts advocacy requires many skills such as diplomacy, clarity, and charm. But it is always essential for arts advocates to listen first. I proposed to work with Kathleen Sharpe because she is a strong female role model, an energetic arts advocate, and an established executive with a positive outlook. Kathleen is adept at working at the local, provincial, and federal levels simultaneously. I admire her ability to see the potential in people and in governments. I know her insight will help me advance my advocacy skills.

The Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners ($34,000) is awarded to a recent graduate of a Canadian school of architecture who demonstrates exceptional potential in contemporary architectural design.

What lessons do you expect to learn in Berlin and Hong Kong that could benefit your home city of Calgary?

Calgary, like many Canadian cities, is a young city that has experienced new development. However, it has grown in size instead of density, leading to the development of separate neighborhoods where people live, work, and are entertained. As a result, almost no building or neighborhood is ever fully occupied at all hours of the day. The downtown core lies empty in the evenings and weekends while suburban neighborhoods are vacant in the mornings and afternoons. This has a tremendous consequence on energy use and street life.

In Hong Kong and Berlin, high density and re-appropriation of buildings for different uses has created urban fabrics that are in their whole, mixed use entities. In many instances, similar elements common to disparate building types have been aggregated to create hybrid building typologies. Lessons learnt from visiting and studying these examples may help us move away from developing cities as a series of isolated entities. Cities and buildings should instead be seen as a sum of parts that, when grafted together, can result in shared efficiencies and make our neighborhoods more dynamic at all hours of the day.