Call for Submissions: Projects Celebrating Pride in Place

Buddies in Bad Times is Toronto’s leading destination for artistically rigorous alternative theatre and a world leader in developing queer voices and stories for the stage. Buddies offers a year-round program that includes a full season of queer theatre, new works festivals, artist residencies, and intergenerational training and education initiatives. This past year, we have witnessed artists adapt their practices to continue creating art within our given circumstances. 

In our efforts to celebrate our queer communities, and be as flexible as possible with the ever-changing COVID-19 guidelines, we are bringing back Queer Pride in Place. Our need to celebrate, mark and express Pride as queer artists and communities is still real and necessary as ever. Between June 15 and 30, 2021 Buddies invites queer artists to create new ways to celebrate Pride… in place. 

During this ongoing time of physical distancing, we’re asking: how can we still find ways to take up public space, be visible, out, loud & proud, and political? How can we bring the spirit of queer pride to our neighbourhoods, public, private, digital, and shared spaces across our city? 

Buddies is seeking project proposals from queer artists and performers all over the GTA, to bring Pride to the place you live: to use queer art and performance to transform / illuminate / enliven / activate the street you live on, your building, balcony, porch, windows, rooftop, garden, sidewalk, mailboxes. This year, we will also accept projects that are shared through digital mediums.    

Deadline: March 26, 2021 at 11:59PM

Call for Submissions

• Installations (mobile, stationary)
• One-to-one, physically distant performances
• Mail-out / Distribution installations
• Performances on porches, through windows, on rooftops
• Physically distant block “parades” 
• Local  / site-specific space activations 
• Telephone based performances
• Audio plays
• Live-stream performance
• Public digital media installations
• Things we haven’t thought of at all!  

Artists may apply for funding of between $500 and $2000 to realize the project, to cover artist fees and materials. 

We request that all proposals comply with up-to-date health and safety guidelines relating to COVID-19, and we invite artists to engage with these constraints as a creative challenge.  Buddies will not consider any proposal which violates current public health protocols, or which would pose health risks to artists, audiences, bystanders, or the public at large. 

Submission details

Please include in your application:

• a proposal (max 1 page), providing as much detail as possible (please include potential neighbourhood(s) the project will take place) 
• artist bio/CV (max 1 page)
• any considerations concerning public health
• amount requested and a budget

Applications should be submitted to submissions@buddiesinbadtimes.com in a single PDF.

Any questions or requests for accommodations in the application process should be sent to Daniel Carter, Interim Programming Director, at daniel@buddiesinbadtimes.com