Valentyna Matyushenko is using dance to share her love of Ukrainian culture.

Pysanka, or Ukrainian Easter eggs, have an important meaning to Grandora dancer and choreographer Valentyna Matyushenko. They are a significant part of her culture, but she has also had her own brush with their magical qualities. An older woman once handed her a Pysanka with stairs drawn on it, symbolizing career growth. Within a few months, Matyushenko fulfilled her life-long dream of opening a dance studio. “I still have that Pysanka,” she says.

Embroidery has become a restorative practice for Lia Pas, who has had to switch from performing artist to fabric artist due to a serious, long-term illness.

Lia Pas is a multidisciplinary artist who combines music, theatre, text composition and performance in her work. In 2015 she became ill with a virus and was subsequently diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, a serious, long-term illness that affects many body systems, leading to severe fatigue, as well as problems with thinking, concentrating, pain and dizziness.

Marjorie Beaucage has felt like a misfit because of the way she’s lived her life. She’s embraced her inner “freak” with her persona, “Your Holy Freakness”.

After seeing The Greatest Showman, a 2017 movie about “freaks”, Marjorie Beaucage stomped her feet outside the theatre and yelled, “I Am Your Holy Freakness!” She could relate to the characters because “I’ve felt like a misfit because of the way that I’ve lived my life – being an oddball and sometimes feeling like a freak because of my difference, because it wasn’t accepted.”

Natasha Urkow didn’t think that performing in theatre was still possible after a spinal cord injury. But she learned it needed to be her passion and career choice.

Natasha Urkow has been passionate about theatre from a very young age. “I had a knack for it,” she says. After she sustained a spinal cord injury when she was 18, she didn’t think performing was still possible. Then she went to the University of Regina and took the “Devising Inclusive Theatre” class instructed by Kathleen Irwin and Traci Foster.

Internationally renowned artist Andrew Salgado’s work has found its way home to the SK Arts Permanent Collection.

SK Arts recently purchased a major work from internationally known Saskatchewan-born artist Andrew Salgado. While he’s lived in London, England, since he completed his MFA at Chelsea College in 2009, Saskatchewan holds a very special place in his heart and his art. “I’ve always been very proud of being from Saskatchewan, and I love coming home. It comes up in my art and in the titles of my work; I dream about it,” he says.

Through playwriting, Joanne Weber raises awareness about Saskatchewan’s history of deaf settlers.

Few people have heard about the Dsettlers who immigrated to Saskatchewan in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Deaf playwright Joanne Weber aims to change that. With the help of an Independent Artists grant, she is writing the true story of Jane Groom’s battle with immigration officers to allow “handicapped” (deaf) people to move to Canada and try their luck at farming.

Saskatoon singer/songwriter Yvonne St. Germaine shares her personal journey and helps others through gospel music.

In 2006 Yvonne St. Germaine was living a dark, lonely and suicidal life. She was addicted to alcohol, prescription pills and street drugs, including crack cocaine. When she began seeing demons in her home, she knew she needed help.

Kris Alvarez is exploring a place where land acknowledgement and a theatre show are one and the same.

At public events, audiences have become used to hearing treaty acknowledgements, many of which seem recited by rote. Regina theatre artist Kris Alvarez feels it’s important to personalize these acknowledgements.

Dene High School in La Loche received Artists in Schools grants to bring artists into the classroom to serve as role models for students.

Dene High School in La Loche received its first Artists in Schools grant in 2019 to bring Dene musician Damien Cheecham into the classroom to teach students guitar. “The fact that students were always asking if the music program would continue is evidence that it made a profound difference,” says Bill Green, Literacy and Numeracy Coach.

With the help of an Independent Artists grant, Kirkby is writing Untold: The Hutterite Story, a book she hopes will demystify Hutterites by explaining their history in a compelling narrative.

Although Hutterites have a 145-year history in North America, relatively little is known about them in mainstream. Public misperceptions became particularly pronounced in July 2020, when COVID-19 outbreaks occurred on three of the 400 Hutterite colonies on the Prairies.