Music NB and Mi’kmaq Hip Hop artist Wolf Castle partner to create a new grant to support Indigenous musicians from the province.
Music-Musique NB has partnered with Mi’kmaq Hip Hop artist Wolf Castle to launch a new project aimed at supporting emerging Indigenous musicians from the province. The NB Indigenous Artists Development Grant will provide one artist with a financial support, as well as tools, mentorship support and guidance to aid in the development of a new musical project.
“The idea for the grant came to me after realizing I was finally in a place in my career right now where I could give back to the arts community that has supported me for so long,” said project co-founder Tristan Grant, who performs as Wolf Castle. “I am very passionate about art, its power to heal and express, something that many of us feel deeply. Because of this, I love discovering new up and coming artists and making their career goals, visions and dreams a little easier to get to than when I was just starting out.”
Grant believes the partnership with Music NB will further support recipients with industry knowledge and networking opportunities that will help strengthen and support the work of each artist.
“My hopes are that by the end the artist gets to create the project they wanted to do, is happy with it and also learned a thing or two about the business side of things and set the path towards growing more and more as an artist,” he said.
Still considered a pilot project, Grant hopes the NB Indigenous Artists Development Grant will grow to support more artists in the future.
“So far this grant is going to be given to one artist, as it is a pilot project with Music NB,” he said. “However, we hope to make it an even larger grant and have the ability to work with four artists a year on a six-month basis, and perhaps even deviate from just musicians and allow sound engineers, techs, venue management or other aspects of the music business to be part of the project.”
Deadline for 2021 applications is January 29. More information can be found at musicnb.org
