The Robert G. Kemp Arts Award
The Award was created in 1989 to encourage and recognize an individual or group residing in the South Georgian Bay area creating an innovative artistic project.
Award amount: $4000
Application Opens: April 14th 2025
Application Deadline: June 1st 2025
For additional inquiries, please contact: [email protected]
Objective:To provide encouragement and/or recognition for the development of an innovative artistic project that benefits the residents of the South Georgian Bay Region.
Eligibility: Any individual, artist group or collaborative living and working in the South Georgian Bay area. The artistic project must be delivered, exhibited or performed in the South Georgian Bay region (Collingwood, Creemore, Meaford, Stayner, Thornbury, The Town of Blue Mountains, Wasaga Beach, Clearview, and Grey Highlands.)
2019 Robert G. Kemp Arts Award Winner Testimonial
“Most every artist will reach a crux in their career as they must choose a path forward in their development. The artist can courageously choose to scale-up, often facing financial risk or other lost opportunities. They can choose to remain the same, risking career stagnation. Or the artist can choose to quit altogether. These choices are particularly difficult for artists residing in rural communities such as South Georgian Bay, with creative opportunities being more plentiful in our great cities. That is why community arts organizations like the Blue Mountain Foundations for the Arts are crucial to the viability of a successful, supportive and thriving arts community like ours.
For me as an artist, The Robert G. Kemp award symbolizes what a superior arts community stands for. Not only does the award provide crucial financial support to artists and projects, but it provides confident recognition from the artist community. Art takes courage, and what the Kemp Award provided me with first and foremost was the
courage to believe in myself and my artistic vision, and secondly with financial support to see the project to a higher level of execution. The support of the Robert G. Kemp award and the Blue Mountain Foundation for the Arts helped me find the courage to scale-up my career as a filmmaker, and supported a project that employed local artists
and service providers. Thank you to the Kemp Family, the grant committee, the BMFA board for your ongoing support to the artistic community and for believing in the arts in South Georgian Bay.”
–Tracey Strnad, 2019 Robert G. Kemp Award Recipient
2021 Robert G. Kemp Arts Award Winner Testimonial
I am so excited to be able to offer this opportunity to explore creativity and expression with Events for Life participants, a chance to discover and express in different ways. Our wonderful community of adults with differences will have the chance to be who they are, I will have the opportunity to spend an entire year with them and build upon their needs and interests, grow the program with them and for them. One of our participants says, ‘I love to learn art and new art techniques as it helps me keep calm.’ We are thrilled to have this chance to change lives through art.
–Maureen Munden, 2021 Robert G. Kemp Award Recipient
Tracey Lawko is the 2022
Kemp Arts Award Winner
Her piece “Reflections of Ourselves” was chosen for its outstanding gift to the community. It is a collaborative art project that celebrates the rich cultural heritage of Canadians.
Lawko chose a tree as a non-political symbol of human community where differences of human culture are like the variations of individual leaves of a tree. Each leaf is created by an Indigenous, settler or immigrant Canadian in celebration of their heritage.
Her own stitched leaves, interwoven throughout the piece, represent the mingling of cultures and the common threads between us. She provided a leaf template for artists to use, but the design of each leaf is unique to each artist. Each leaf’s artist statement is displayed with the sculpture.
Check out Tracey’s website at https://traceylawko.com/maple-leaf-project/
