Escape the City

Art & Water, Art…or Water?

 

Our Mission

Art & Water Brings Us Together

Art & Water is Canada’s first and only floating arts and culture festival. We believe that art and culture should be everywhere people are. We strive to create “stumble upon” performances where audiences encounter art & culture in their daily lives, breaking down barriers and encouraging renewed engagement.

Art & Culture moves us, defines us and inspires us along this ever so bumpy road that is life. We are an artist driven organization, empowering emerging artists to take the stage and shine into the new day. We bring light to waterfronts, we brighten lives with our productions and performances. 

Art & Water is a multidisciplinary organization presenting live performance through theatre, dance & music. We create an accessible immersive theatre production for families with young children, captivating their imaginations, inviting them to play, create and imagine with us. We present and host a dockside concert series with emerging artists, providing them a stage to develop their audiences.  In addition, we provide space for artists at low and subsidized rates with a concept called “Bring Your own Show”. We open a seasonal floating art gallery with one of a kind Muskoka Chair Murals created by local artists.

Our Vision

Everything, in it’s own right is a work of art. We hope to inspire others that art has many forms, many manifstations and can be easily accessible. We aspire to curate experiences for our audiences that encourage them down a path of life long patrons of the arts.

We bring Art & Water Together - both incredibly inspiring, healing, and envigorating, art and water bring us together. Our bodies, works of art, made 98% of water, our cities, built on water, cultured by art. These two go hand in hand in hand. Our mission is empower artists by providing access to low cost or subsidized space on the water, in a high traffic area, encouraging their development.

Our Mandate

We strive to create a safe outdoor space for artistic experiences on the water, to support and empower emerging artists in their growth and encourage audiences to reconnect with art & water.

We empower communities by creating art in unexpected dockside venues, allowing audiences to stumble upon art & culture, breaking down barriers and ensuring art & culture finds itself in our everday lives.

 

“Art & Water, two peas in a pod”

— Ourselves

 

What We’ve Achieved

  • Launched in 2021, in a post pandemic world we’re making space for creativity

  • Engaged 4 artists for the inaugural immersive floating galleries

  • We’ve hired a team of 45 artists for our children’s theatre production

  • Commissioned a new musical adaptation of Herman Mellville’s Moby Dick.

  • Launched Art & Water, a dockside concert series, engaging with 50 artists and hundreds of audience members.

  • Supporting Artists with 100% of proceeds, recipients of the Reconnect Festival and Events grant.

  • Ontario’s Reconnect Festival & Events Grant 2021

  • Doing it all over again next year!

Where we are going

  • Constructing a third floating stage for another location in Ontario, Hamilton, Parry Sound, Barrie, Muskoka, we’re looking to bring this concept away from urban centres and into rural Ontario where arts & Culture can have a greater impact, where there is less opportunity.

  • Further developing/commissioning adaptations of water stories for our dockside productions

  • Renewing our floating Muskoka chair art gallery annually

  • Further expanding Art & Water dockside concert series 100 day’s of summer

How do I fit it?

You dear website visitor, you can take a chance on us. Join us dockside for one of our events or productions. Get in touch if you have an idea on how to program the space, be a part of the legacy by supporting our organization. Or just be you, that’s perfectly marvellous too.