RON MANN
Media arts – Toronto

Mann is best known for his internationally acclaimed documentary films exploring fringe cultures, including Comic Book Confidential (1988), Twist (1992), Tales of Rat Fink (2006) and Know Your Mushrooms (2008). A noted mentor of young talent, Mann has also created a distribution company for independent films in Canada and is a leader in the preservation of Canadian film and television archives.

Link to Ron Mann’s website

Toronto Artscape Inc.

Multidisciplinary – Toronto

Toronto Artscape, which received the award for Arts Organization, is a not-for-profit urban developer that creates affordable spaces for artists to live and work. Artscape’s Toronto complexes at Liberty Village, the Distillery District and the Wychwood Barns have benefited artists and arts groups and helped revitalize their neighborhoods.

Link to Artscape website

2009 PREMIER’S AWARDS EMERGING ARTIST AWARD WINNER

Selected annually by the winner of the Premier’s Award for Individual Artist.

Charles Officer

Media Arts -Toronto

Charles Officer is a Toronto actor, screen writer and director and whose first feature-length film Nurse.Fighter.Boy premiered to strong reviews at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). It has since played theatrically in Toronto and Vancouver and has been picked up for international distribution. As an actor Officer has appeared in many stage, film and television productions and he has written and directed several short films. His second short film, Short Hymn_Silent War, received a Special TIFF Jury Citation for Best Canadian Short in 2002 and was nominated for a Genie Award in 2004.

2009 PREMIER’S AWARDS ARTIST AWARD FINALISTS

Lydia Adams

Music - Caledon East

Hailed by the Canadian Music Centre as “the new leading exponent of the Canadian choral composer,” Lydia Adams is a conductor, pianist, composer, producer and arranger, Adams conducts and is Artistic Director of the Amadeus Choir of Greater Toronto and Toronto’s Elmer Iseler Singers, both leaders in commissioning, premiering, performing and recording Canadian choral works.

Link to Lydia Adams profile on Elmer Iseler website

Norm Foster

Theatre - Ancaster

Norm Foster has been called Canada’s pre-eminent comic playwright, and is one of the most prolific and most produced playwrights in the history of Canadian theatre. Foster has over 40 plays to his credit, including Ethan Claymore, The Affections Of May and The Melville Boys, and over the past decade there have been on average close to 150 productions of his plays each year, a number unmatched in Canadian theatre.

Link to Norm Foster website

Gary Kulesha

Music - Toronto

Gary Kulesha is a composer, pianist, conductor and teacher whose music has been commissioned, performed and recorded all over the world. Currently a fulltime faculty member at the University of Toronto, Kulesha has been in residence with major ensembles in Canada for over 20 years including the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, the Canadian Opera Company and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Link to Gary Kulesha website

ahdri zhina mandiela

Theatre - Toronto

A director, choreographer and poet/performer, ahdri zhina mandiela is founder and artistic director of Toronto’s b current performing arts corp which produces the rock.paper.sistahz festival and develops emerging artists through the rAiz’n the sun program. Mandiela has earned the Luscombe Award for mentoring, the Silver Ticket from the Dora Awards and the Victor Martyn Staunton-Lynch prize for mid-career theatre artists from Canada Council for the Arts.

Link to b current website

A. F. Moritz

Literature - Toronto

A. F. Moritz has written more than 15 books of poetry. He has won the Award in Literature of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship and been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His recent collection, Night Street Repairs, published by House of Anansi Press in 2005, won the ReLit Award. A. F. Moritz lives in Toronto and teaches at Victoria University.

2009 PREMIER’S AWARDS ARTS ORGANIZATION AWARD FINALIST

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre

Theatre - Toronto

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre has played a key role in the theatrical, social and political life of Toronto for 30 years. For queer artists (and audiences) in the early days, Buddies was a glimmer of hope in a staunchly hetero arts scene. In the 1990s, it emerged as a leader of the city’s underground and marginalized cultures. Buddies has since developed into what the Canada Council for the Arts called the fastest growing theatre company in Toronto.

Link to Buddies in Bad Times website

Guelph Jazz Festival

Music - Guelph

The Guelph Jazz Festival, a community-based, non-profit organization marks its 15th anniversary in 2009. It presents innovative jazz and creative improvised music and fosters alternative ways of seeing and hearing the world. One of Canada’s most influential music festivals, its growing global reputation in jazz circles means Guelph’s hotels are now booked solid for Festival weekend each year, thereby enriching the community’s culture and economy.

Link to Guelph Jazz Festival website

Harbourfront Centre

Multidisciplinary - Toronto

Harbourfront Centre is Canada’s largest and most active centres for contemporary culture, and works with over 450 community groups to present more than 4,000 programmes annually. Harbourfront Centre introduces audiences to artists and art forms, not normally seen in commercial venues, which explore frontiers in the arts and creative expression.

Link to Harbourfront Centre website

imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival

Media arts - Toronto

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is an annual international festival, held in Toronto to celebrate works by Indigenous peoples on the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio, installation art and new media. Each October, the festival presents a selection of the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from around the globe, and attracts artists and visitors from across Canada and around the world.

Link to imagineNATIVE website

VTape
Visual arts – Toronto

Vtape is an information resource centre and distribution system specializing in the visibility and accessibility of media art works by artists. Vtape makes its exceptional collection of over 4,300 contemporary art works accessible to over 9,000 educators, curators, programmers and scholars as well as the public; making Vtape one of the largest not-for-profit video art distributors in the world.

Link to Vtape website