Skip to Content

Eastern Edge Artist-Run Centre · 72 Harbour Drive, St. John’s, NL, Canada · 709 739 1882

HOLD FAST 2025: Call for Featured Artists

Deadline to apply: March 23, 2025

HOLD FAST Festival is accepting applications for 2025 Featured Artists!

Apply by: March 23, 2025, 11:59pm NDT

Each Featured Artist:

  • presents an Art Crawl project (e.g. performance or interactive installation)
  • leads a workshop
  • & gives an artist talk

This year, HOLD FAST will take place from August 5-9 in St. John’s, NL/Ktaqmkuk. Featured Artists are paid the following fees:

  • Festival Performance Fee (Art Crawl): $495
  • Workshop Fee: $520
  • Artist Talk Fee (Group Presentation): $376
  • Travel Stipend for artists outside of St. John’s metro area: up to $600 (with receipts). We are more than happy to write letters of support for artists who are applying for travel grants! Artists will be contacted if more funding becomes available.

We are accepting applications via Google Form. 

About HOLD FAST 

HOLD FAST Festival is a celebration of contemporary performance, interdisciplinary art, and community engagement in St. John’s, NL. Eastern Edge is seeking Featured Artists to present accessible, meaningful, and critically-relevant work as part of HOLD FAST 2025.

Our core values are:
  • Facilitating community engagement and meaningful exchange
  • Increasing public arts literacy
  • Creating opportunities for artists
  • Critiquing and subverting structural oppressions & systems of power, with emphasis on:
    • queer, feminist, and anti-racist perspectives
    • Newfoundland and Labrador regional identity
    • Indigenous resistance to colonialism

HOLD FAST culminates in a Saturday afternoon Art Crawl, a series of performances, installations, and interactive pop-ups staged outdoors and in non-gallery venues across downtown St. John’s. Past programming has included performances, interactive installations, workshops, dance, drag, burlesque, and free community events for people of all ages.

About Featured Artists

During HOLD FAST, every Featured Artist presents all three of the following:
 
Art Crawl project: A performance or interactive installation to be presented on the last Saturday afternoon of the festival. These projects are presented outdoors, in daylight, on pedestrian thoroughfares and/or non-gallery venues in downtown St. John’s. Successful Art Crawl projects are impactful, dynamic, engaging, and flexible. We encourage artists to propose:
  • Performance art (site-specific or staged in public parks, storefronts, local galleries, etc.)
  • Local community collaboration (participatory artworks or interventions with public space)
  • Interactive installations and sculpture (with the artist acting as host or otherwise present and engaged)
  • Work which does NOT rely heavily on projection or complex technology
The Art Crawl project is the most important part of the application. Please see “Selection Process” for more details on what we look for in a project proposal.
 
Workshop: Share a skill or make art with members of the public. This can be related to your Art Crawl project, or something completely different. Typically a workshop lasts 2-3 hours, and should be accessible to someone with no prior experience. Staff can help you refine workshop proposals, or decide between ideas.
 
Artist Talk: A prepared 10-minute presentation about you and your work, shared on the Friday evening before Art Crawl. Our staff are happy to help with this, especially if you’ve never given an artist talk before!

Selection Process

Our Selection Committee consists of arts workers, community partners, and artists at different stages of their careers. We understand that everyone has different levels of experience in writing proposals and documenting their artwork.

Featured Artists are selected based on the following criteria:
1. Strength and clarity of concept
2. Artistic merit
3. Public engagement
4. Feasibility of proposal

5. Alignment with HOLD FAST’s core values

HOLD FAST welcomes applications from:
  • emerging and self-taught artists, performers, and creatives as well as established artists
  • members of equity-seeking communities
  • individual artists or small collectives (please note: we can’t guarantee additional artist fees for groups at this time)
Preference will be given to projects which are complete or near completion at the time you apply, or which are similar to examples of successful past work. Projection-based projects may not be a good fit for HOLD FAST, as Featured Artists present their work during the afternoon.

Submission Details

We prefer to receive applications via this google form. To make alternate arrangements (e.g. audio or video submission, or a zoom interview which will be recorded for the jury), please email eeholdfast@gmail.com no later than March 9, 2025.
Submissions should include:
  • Short artist bio (50-150 words for promotional use)
  • Art Crawl Project title
  • Art Crawl Project summary (1-3 sentences for promotional use)
  • Art Crawl Project description (200-500 words)
  • Technical equipment needed for Art Crawl
  • Workshop title
  • Workshop proposal (100-300 words)
  • Workshop equipment, materials, and space requirements
  • Optional: Alternative workshop ideas
  • Link to Support Materials: Image list, up to 10 images and/or link to video/audio clips. Optional: CV/Resume or other document that tells us more about your past experience and who you are (PDF files are preferred!)
  • Optional: Self-identification and/or connection to place

Click here to start an application!

Please contact us by email with any questions: eeholdfast@gmail.com