Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 27/00) - Representatives of the Canada Council for the Arts will be making a whirlwind tour of Nunavut in early April.

But the most important stop for director Shirley Thomson and chairman Jean-Louis Roux will be in Cape Dorset on April 11 to present sculptor Kiawak Ashoona with the prestigious Molson Prize. The 5 p.m. ceremony at the Sam Pudlat school will be open to the community.

"The Molson Prize is a very special award," says Donna Balkan, communications officer for the Canada Council for the Arts.

"It's funded from the proceeds of an endowment from the Molson Foundation. We give it every year to one individual in the arts and one individual in the humanities or social sciences."

The prize comes with a cash award of $50,000.

Two other representatives of the Canada Council will join the director and chairman.

Viviane Gray, the officer for the Aboriginal Arts program, and Ian Reid, the officer for the Aboriginal Video and Film program, will meet with local artists in Cape Dorset, Pangnirtung, Iglulik and Iqaluit (Thomson and Roux will only travel to Dorset and Iqaluit).

"Whenever we go outside of Ottawa to meet with artists, we try to communicate to them the kinds of things at the council," says Gray.

"This has never happened in Nunavut, not on this large scale. We'll meet directly with the artists in four communities."

Some of the groups Gray and Reid will spend time with include Iglulik Isuma Production, Tarriaksuk Video Centre and Unikaatuatiit Theatre Group (also in Iglulik).

As they do in other Canadian communities, Gray and Reid hope to conduct information sessions -- open to all artists, Inuit or non-Inuit -- to familiarize artists with the grant process.

"A lot of people don't understand how grants work. When you apply for them, what does that mean? How do you write a proposal? We help people to understand that system."

Henry Kudluk, an interpreter from the Inuit Art Foundation in Ottawa, will travel with the council group to facilitate communication.

"He already has experience working with Nunavut artists," says Gray.

And all the council's material will have been translated in Inuktitut, adds Gray.

"And we're getting a 1-800 line just for Inuktitut callers."

In Iqaluit, the Canada Council representatives will meet with the Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association and attend the doll exhibit at the Nunnata Sunakkutaangit Museum.

"On Monday the 10th of April they'll be having some meetings with some representatives of the Nunavut Government. And in the evening they will be having an information meeting with Inuit artists of Iqaluit," says Balkan.

"Nunavut has a very dynamic and very vibrant artistic community -- not only in sculpture, for which, of course, it's very, very well-known, but also in various aspects of crafts and printmaking and so on," says Balkan.

"And the mandate of the Canada Council is to support the arts in Canada. We award grants to 5,000 artists and arts organizations every year, and we want to ensure that artists in Nunavut are aware of what the council does and how to apply for a grant and what the criteria are for grants."

There aren't as many Nunavut artists applying for grants as the council would hope, according to Balkan.

"It's also helpful for the Canada Council to find out more about the arts community in Nunavut, what they're all about and what their needs are," she says.

Gray adds that other communities want the Canada Council to visit, but that isn't possible at this time.

"More trips are being planned by other people at the council during the year," she says.

That includes plans to visit artists in the Northwest Territories. The Great Northern Arts Festival in Inuvik is on the agenda, as is Yellowknife, among others.