Harbourfront Centre - Fresh Ground new works

About Fresh Ground new works Commissions Call for Submissions

Harbourfront Centre is Canada's leading centre for contemporary culture, with a history spanning thirty-five years, and a well-earned international reputation as a non-profit centre for arts and culture, nurturing innovation, exploration and artistic expression in the areas of theatre, dance, literature, music, film, visual arts, new media, fine craft, community arts, and diverse cultural representation and celebration.

A key component of Harbourfront Centre's mandate is to champion the creation of new artistic works, providing a platform for innovation, creation and excellence. Recognizing that some of the most creative and fascinating work being produced across the country today is the result of artists working in different ways and through non-traditional collaborations, Harbourfront Centre launched Fresh Ground new works, a national commissioning programme, in 2004.

This legacy programme has become a catalyst for new Canadian artistic works incorporating more than one discipline or field. Through open national submission calls in 2005, 2007 and 2008, Harbourfront Centre has awarded over $300,000 toward fourteen new Canadian commissions.

Harbourfront Centre is pleased to issue the fourth Call for Submissions for Fresh Ground new works in September 2009. Thanks to the generous support of our donors, a maximum of five separate projects will be commissioned for creation and presentation at Harbourfront Centre during the 2011-2012 season.

Fresh Ground new works is made possible by the generosity of several major individual donors who have actively assisted in the creation of new Canadian artworks: Peter Allen, William J. S. Boyle, Lionel F. Conacher and Joan Dea, Margaret and Jim Fleck, John Kazanjian and Susan Soloway, Michael and Sonja Koerner, Judy and Wil Matthews, George E. Myhal, Sonja Smits and Seaton McLean; and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the J.P. Bickell Foundation.

Fresh Ground new works

Harbourfront Centre's National Commissioning Programme