Experience art illuminated at BigArtTO, a city-wide public art celebration featuring free temporary public artworks projected onto local buildings and landmarks. Created by Toronto artists, BigArtTO is a City of Toronto collaboration with OCAD University and AVA Animation & Visual Arts Inc.

OCAD U President’s AWARDS 2021, hosted by Julius Poncelet Manapul. In support presenter by Reel Asian Film Festival. Live from Toronto, Canada and Manila Philippines, celebrating the achievements in experimental short films.

“June is Pride month, a time when LGBTQ2S+ communities around the world celebrate the freedom to be themselves. And so the Quinte Arts Council is proud to host the third annual Everyone Under the Rainbow show. While the QAC gallery is still closed, we invite you to a celebration of art in a variety of mediums – sculpture, oil, acrylic, collage and digital – that reflects, respects, features and speaks to our LGBTQ2S+ community and allies. Featured artists Luis Cisneros, Sarah Winn, Daniel Fobert, Ella Wagner, Rosyln Dechert and Yuan-Quin Ingrid Kao are displayed in our Gallery Window at 36 Bridge Street East, Belleville. While there are dozens of different pride flags, representing a spectrum of sex, sexuality, attraction, and gender, you’ll find the art displayed under three flags: the six-striped rainbow flag, a symbol of LGBTQ2S+ pride and social movements, the transgender flag and the pansexual flag. Our intention is to foster new connections with artists in our LGBTQ2S+ community in Quinte to provide a safe place for them to showcase and celebrate their art, and provide a safe place for them to be.

This past fall OCAD University and Mapúa University (Manila, Philippines) brought together 20 emerging artists to connect, build community and create art in the new digital world through our International Online Residency Experience (IORE): Narratives Through Global Space. Over the course of five months (September 2020 - February 2021) this virtual residency recognized the profound and essential value that diversity brings to the creation, reception and circulation of creative practices and discourse. Led by Julius Poncelet Manapul (Associate Chair of Contemporary Drawing & Painting, Assistant Professor at OCAD U), and co-taught with Natalie Waldburger (Interim Chair of Sculpture/Installation, Professor at OCAD U), along with Mapúa U faculty supervisors John Xavier S. Chavez (Professor in Writing for New Media Studies) and Roberto R. Ang (Professor in Documentary Film Studies), participants were given the opportunity to work collaboratively in pushing experimental film narratives across both Canadian and Filipinx cultural spectrums amidst the global backdrop of the pandemic. In collaboration with the participants from Mapúa University, students will join the project in promotion and research led by Dr. Marissa Largo (Assistant Professor in Art Education at NSCAD).