In 2024, Debaser, The Framework, Produced By Youth, and The Moving Art Gallery all came together to create project WARP.
The project would award Ottawa, Gatineau, and Kitigan Zibi creatives a $5,000 honorarium alongside a peer mentorship program, investing $60,000 back into the local arts community across four cohorts.
Now, the project is on its third cohort, running from June 3 to July 26. Participants meet online and in-person at the Digital Arts Resource Centre and Artengine for group sessions and one-on-one coaching sessions, and a shadowing mentorship.
“Our mentorship program is designed not only to build safer and more accessible spaces for the community, but to further grow a boundary-pushing and thought-provoking arts scene by disrupting Ottawa-Gatineau’s art ecosystem with the goal of redefining, rebuilding, and sustaining a new standard when it comes to sharing space with our community through art,” says Maeve Tavakoli, co-manager for WARP.
Tafari Hall, co-founder of WARP and Produced By Youth, says mentor-to-mentee relationships play a crucial role in fostering emerging independent arts leaders.
“We see so many arts programs/workshops come and go with the same big organizations running them. Picture those same organizations, with their resources and staff, injecting mentorship opportunities into their program development, and using that to empower emerging arts leaders to run their own programs,” he says. “We would have a huge influx of new and interesting programming, plus a more diverse and vibrant arts community.”
Kim Farris-Manning, an alum of WARP’s second cohort, says the structure and format of WARP gave them the framework to develop their Queer Youth Choir project as a pilot; “incorporating youth consultants and participant engagement through a focus-group approach. This way, we get to test ideas, experiment with different elements, have fun, put on a show, and build something that can evolve beyond this first stage with lots of external input along the way.”
Kim Farris-Manning. Photo: Wendley Pierre.
“The Queer Youth Choir is a creative music-making group for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, queer spawn, and allies (ages 14-17) in Ottawa. It’s designed as a choral-education environment where participants have agency over their learning—exploring music through games, movement, composition, and theory in ways that reflect their backgrounds and interests,” Manning says.
The Queer Youth Choir is set to perform at Ottawa Pride 2025.
Now, with this third cohort ongoing, Hall says he hopes there is “an improved feeling of support, understanding, and fun.”
“Emphasis on fun, because that’s why we do this great work… right?” he says.
This cohort is comprised of three mentees: Lucille Giwa for their “Stories In Ink—Live Edition” Tattooing In Dialogue with Black Creatives project, Thandizo Joy for her “A Little Death” live genre-blurring musical requiem, and Abrar (last name omitted) for their live storytelling event and digital archival project of queer Arabs in Ottawa.
Tavakoli says there are multiple new goals for the upcoming cohort.
“Our goals for the upcoming cohort include debuting open and free ‘ask me anything’ sessions called Brain Splatter throughout the summer for our community of applicants and mentees across all three cohorts, regardless of their acceptance in the program, and trying out a new combination of panel-style and one-on-one session with the panelists for our event planning fundamentals workshop, new partnership with Artengine, and inviting new mentors including Stacey Forrester from Good Night Out Vancouver.”
Tavakoli also says this “is a very appropriate time to think about success because in the last few weeks we’ve witnessed and attended sold-out ‘successful’ events that our mentees from the very first cohort of WARP organized and built from scratch.”
“Witnessing this growth while standing in a room full of people cheering on the organizers and admiring the work they’ve done and the event they’ve put together made me feel so incredibly proud to have been a part of the support system that helped build a platform and a space for these brilliant ideas to be seen,” they say.
Applications for Cohort #4 open up Aug. 1, and additional details will be shared on Instagram @projectwarp_ or the WARP website www.projectwarp.ca.
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