Meet our 2024 Artists-in-Residence!
Andrew Paulsen
Andrew Paulsen lives in Thunder Bay, working in film, TV, radio, and theatre, as a director, producer, writer, and actor.
He is an internationally produced PGC playwright and runs his own theatre group, New Noise Productions, producing alternative and edgy offerings in Thunder Bay.
Originally from Hurkett, Ontario, he is a graduate of the Confederation College Film Program and received an HBA in Psychology and a MA in English from Lakehead University.
His plays Cerebrospinalis, Falling Backwards, and A Man Dies By The Gun were produced by the 10x10 Play Festivals. His play The Last House was produced in the 2019 New Market National 10 Minute Play Festival, and his play Rōnin was produced in Helisinki in a British-Finish coproduction at the 3rd Annual Höyhentämö Short-n-Snappy Showcase. He was a member of the Inaugural Playwrights' Unit at Magnus Theatre and the Inaugural Northern Creators Unit with Pat The Dog Theatre Creation. His full-length play You Paid For It; They’ll Pay For It was given a workshop and reading last year at the Sudbury Theatre Centre, and a workshop and reading this year presented by Superior Theatre Festival.
His full-length plays are Cerebrospinalis, Come and Find Me, Moosefucker, Ontario, Dead Boy Party, Cosmonaut, You Paid For It; They’ll Pay For It, Heckler, Chain-Gang, and the soon-to-be-finished Canaddakkon.
He likes Canuxploitation and Hammer films, point-and-click adventure games, cigars, Ameritrash board games, cats, dogs, giraffes, wordless comics, betting on horses, and solving Rubix’s Cubes.
Mindful Makers Collective
Mindful Makers Collective (MMC) creates dedicated space for artists to make and exhibit work, exchange and advance skills and expand our professional networks. Through creative public presentations, we aim to connect with the wider arts community and lessen the stigma associated with mental health conditions and addiction.
Our peer-to-peer support model fosters social connection, creative inspiration, innovation, and skill-sharing among artists and makers. Membership is free and open to emerging/established artists (age 18+) in Thunder Bay/Anemki Wekwedong who self-identify as having lived experience. We offer artist talks, workshops, and opportunities to present and collaborate. Access to space and materials to create new work is our greatest asset.
We launched in 2018, with support from Workman Arts Scaling Project (funded for 3 years by OTF), our Steering Committee and our local partners: Thunder Bay Art Gallery and Alpha Court Community Mental Health and Addiction Services. By year three we had 50 members. Currently, we operate on a project-to-project basis with one part-time Coordinator, Carol Kajorinne Krievin. Our projects, funded by the Ontario Arts Council, City of Thunder Bay, and Canada Council for the Arts, have included: a juried exhibition with printed publication (2021), inter-arts workshops (2020, 2022, 2024), hosting our first Artist Residency and Mobile Arts program pilot (2022), Open Mic sessions and performance-focused workshops, and creating a collaborative sculpture with CréAction Collective (2023).
In 2024 we are excited to once again work with Eleanor Albanese to further develop our inter-arts programming as we collectively weave art forms together to ignite forest lore; bringing our interactive sculpture to Tamarack Festival!
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Rose-Erin Stokes
Highlighted by an artistic acumen and an amazing ability to evoke emotion, Stokes' music is demonstrative of a songwriting craftsperson at work, with music, words, and vocal performances that connect to the hearts and spirits of all who hear them.
What is undeniable is the deeply honest approach to her musical storytelling, a wide-open emotional tableau that is representative of the silence of the vast forests, and big open skies of the northern Ontario city of North Bay where Stokes was born and raised.
Her prior work has garnered recognition from the Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards, earning her an 'Outstanding Songwriter' nomination in 2019 and award in 2017.
Stokes recently released her sophomore LP ‘When The Sun Goes Away,’ produced by Jim Bryson (Kathleen Edwards). It merges folk formats and orchestration with elements of country, indie rock, and ambient electronic embellishments, which create a supportive foundation for Stokes’ crystal clear vocals and unique conversational phrasing. Its 11 tracks tell stories of relationships and self-reckoning and capture nuanced moments in a relatable way that will both break your heart and put it back together again.
Thank you!
We’d like to express our sincerest gratitude to our jurors,
Cathy McKeown, Kelsey Ruhl and Pamela Wilson,
for sharing their time, energy and expertise in selecting this year’s residents!