Arts » Arts Notes

Two large new artworks by Ken Lum, a hip-hop musical, and a heartfelt theatrical ode to a dying mother are just some of the recipients of the final funding handout from the Arts Partners in Creative Development.

The multilevel partnership of funding bodies dispersed $800,000 for its last installment. It has given a total $6.2 million across the province in the past three years for groups to create new work as an artistic legacy spun out of the Olympic Games.

The Vancouver Art Gallery received one of the highest amounts, $90,540, for Monument to East Vancouver artist Ken Lum to create two large-scale new pieces. They'll be central to a planned survey of his work. Ken Lum: Mirror Maze With 12 Signs of Depression and House of Realization.

Another 90 grand is going to Neworld Theatre to develop James Fagan Tait's adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyesvsky's The Idiot for the 2012 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

Presentation House Gallery and the B.C. Photography and Media Arts Society received $82,000 for Cedric Bomford and collaborators to create a major new public artwork.

Among other recipients:

> Chop Theatre Society received about $31,000 for How to Disappear Completely, Itai Erdal's multimedia, one-man show about the impending death of his mother (to debut at the Chutzpah! Festival next year); > Green Thumb Theatre and playwright Michael Northey are getting $68,000 to create the hip-hop musical Sick Daze; > Karen Jamieson Dance Company is using $47,000 to complete Collision, a multicultural, site-specific work at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre as part of next year's Dancing on the Edge Festival; > Puppet and stiltmasters Mortal Coil Performance Society are getting $80,000 to create a site-specific work at the Britannia Shipyards in Steveston; > And the choral ensemble musica intima received $34,500 to help commission David McIntyre to create the opera Songs From the Holy Forest, based on Robert Blaser's poetry.

For a full list of projects, see www.artspartners.ca/.

Funding for the program comes from the Province of British Columbia, Canada Council for the Arts, City of Vancouver, Vancouver Foundation, Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), and 2010 Legacies Now.