The 2024-2025 membership campaign is ongoing at the Independent Media Arts Alliance, the national alliance representing the media arts. Become a member or renew your membership now to contribute to the richness and strenght of the community!

If you haven’t had a chance to read it, we invite you to take a look at the IMAA’s Basis of Unity! The Basis of Unity states the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA)’s position on and commitment to anti-oppression principles. This document is a first attempt to capture, for IMAA’s membership and community, IMAA’s perspective on how to build a more equitable, robust, abundant and interconnected sector. 

Help to ensure that in the independent media arts sector:

• → Artists from diverse backgrounds have access to resources and equipment to produce quality work and to support their exhibition, promotion and distribution within the country and abroad,
• → Artists are paid a minimum fee for the use of their work.
• → Artworks are collected, archived and preserved as part of Canadian Heritage.
• → Art organizations are able to compensate cultural workers appropriately for their highly skilled work.
• → Artists and organizations across Canada, especially those from underrepresented communities, have a forum to discuss key issues and contribute to the development of the sector.

Member Privileges & Benefits

→ Join IMAA’s Board
→ Join our committees: Membership Committee / EDI Committee / Independent Media Arts Access Network (IMAAN) Committee / Human Ressources Committee
→ Get a discount to register to the National Media Arts Conference
→ Be eligible for travel subsidies to attend national events like the National Media Arts Conference coorganised by IMAA
→ Reduce costs on health insurance for your staff and affiliated artists.
→ Be part of the Independent Media Arts Access Network (IMAAN)!
→ Join a vast network of nearly 100 highly dedicated media arts organizations, collectives and galleries and professional peers
→ Appear in our membership directory
→ Connect with the independent media community on Discord
→ Take advantage of opportunities to participate in IMAA’s projects! For example, add your voice to the conversation when voting the recommended Fee Schedule, participate in community projects such as interConnect or make your organization benefit from artist residencies through the Digital Skills for Youth program.
→ Attend regional meetings
→ Increase the visibility of your work Projects
→ And more, access a detailed list of membership privileges and benefit here

To become a member of the IMAA or to renew your membership, please complete this membership form!

*The IMAA membership cycle begins on April 1 and ends on March 31 of each year. Members who begin the process after February 1 will have their membership extended for the upcoming cycle.

Welcome to Temporal Anchorings, a three-day Media Arts Gathering in Halifax in June 2024! This event will bring together arts administrators from media arts organizations across the country to discuss important issues of sustainability and resilience by looking back at the past and forward to the future while grounding ourselves in the present.

SAVE THE DATE!
June 11 – 13, 2024
Temporal Anchorings – Website

The 2024 Media Arts Gathering is meant to be a space for all arts workers from media arts organizations located in so-called Canada to connect with each other, and to foster a sense of solidarity and community. The goal of the gathering is to be a site for advancing arts practices in the media arts sector, nurturing professional development, collaboration, and exchange.

We invite all cultural workers – administrators, interns, programmers, managers, technicians and all other roles that steer organizations forwards – in the Media Arts Sector to attend this Gathering, including: emerging, LGBTQIA2S+ and BIPOC cultural workers, as well as long standing members of the community.

The Temporal Anchorings conference features a 3-day program of round-table discussions and panels with Q+A periods, as well as a community dinner hosted by CFAT. This year, we will additionally focus on experiencing artistic work from our own sector, in the form of live performances and screenings, concluding with the launch of Everyseeker, a festival featuring genre-fluid music and experimental sound. The complete program will be announced in March 2024!

➤ Registration opens in March, 2024
➤ Format: In-person in Halifax, Nova-Scotia
➤ For any questions, please contact Marilyne Parent at info@imaa.ca.

Apply for Travel Funding
In the spirit of preparedness, we encourage organisations intending to attend the conference and eligible for Arts Across Canada: Travel component to apply early! While IMAA will be offering a limited amount of travel subsidies, the Arts Across Canada Travel Grant will enable us to stretch our funds much further. This program offers funding for travel within Canada if the destination is at least 300 kilometers from your place of departure.

For members unsure if they are eligible, who have never applied to this component, or who may need a refresher on the application process, we are hosting a Travel Funding Clinic Discord session on March 21, 2024 at 1pm EST.

Temporal Anchorings is organized by the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA) in partnership with the Centre for Art Tapes (CFAT) and the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition (NIMAC), and in collaboration with Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative (AFCOOP), Struts Gallery, St John’s International Women’s Film Festival (SJIWFF), Media Arts Alliance of the Pacific (MAAP), Cinevolution Media Arts Society and Everyseeker. 

CLICK HERE TO STAY UPDATED!

There is still time to share the invitation with your colleagues and register!

Throughthestorm.ca

The 2022 edition of the national media arts gathering Through the Storm will follow a new hybrid format. This iteration is specifically looking to reach out to as many cultural workers and artists working in independent media arts as possible. Invite members of your team or community to participate; we want to hear from all of you!

The in-person portion of the conference will take place on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation in Ottawa . This gathering is a co-production between IMAA, MANO, NIMAC and DARC, in collaboration with Asinabka Film and Media Arts Festival.

4 streams → 4 working groups

The confernce is structured around 4 working groups that will meet online before the gathering and will continue to meet during the event, while presenting their work during the daily plenaries.

• Sacrifice as Beginning: Conflict, Justice, Reparations
  Tuesday May 17 at 2pm EST
  Tuesday June 14  at 2pm EST
  Tuesday July 12  at 2pm EST
  
  
• The Exploitation of Informality: Formal Labour Standards – Unions, Guilds, Ombudsperson
  Tuesday May 17 at 2pm EST
  Tuesday June 14  at 2pm EST
  Tuesday July 12  at 2pm EST
  
  
• Economies Beyond Survival: Arts Organisations as Alternative Economic Frameworks
  Thursday May 23 at 2pm EST
  Thursday June 16 at 2pm EST
  Thursday July 14 at 2pm EST
  
  
• After Hubs to Utopian Spaces: Towards Cooperative Housing and Arts Facilities Looking Outward
  Thursday May 19 at 2pm EST
  Thursday June 16 at 2pm EST
  Thursday July 14 at 2pm EST

How to participate

1. Choose a stream

2. Register

3. Attend 3 virtual meetings
*First Workgroup meeting : May 17, 19 or 23, 2022, according to the streams.

4. Attend the in-person national conference, August 10-14, in Ottawa!

Travel Subsidy –   Deadline extended to May 6, 2022

A limited number of travel subsidies will be available for MANO/IMAA member organizations & collectives, and members of NIMAC.

We ask that anyone interested in a travel subsidy to send us an email by Friday, May 6th 2022 outlining:

• why it will be valuable for you to attend the conference,
• your travel plans (including, where you are traveling from and how),
  Paragraph outlining financial need, including:
• the estimated cost of travel,
• other sources of funding/ support,
• and/ or the financial gap this subsidy would fill

Travel subsidy recipients will be notified on Friday, May 20th 2022. The subsidy will be paid on-site, upon submission of receipts to our Conference Coordinator, Jillian Kennedy.

Feel free to contact Jillian anytime at symposium@mano-ramo.ca s if you have any further questions.