Comic book research and creation residencies in Angoulême, Bilbao, and Québec City
Three-month specialized residency program for comic book authors in Angoulême, France, Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao, Spain, and Maison de la littérature, Québec.
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Partners
Introduction
Go to Mon dossier CALQ This link will open in a new window and complete your grant application online.
Before submitting an application, artists are advised to read the program over carefully. If you have any questions after reading the program or if there is anything else you would like to clarify, please email or phone the program manager. The manager can also provide information and advice on how to present your project and what to include in your application.
Foreword
To foster lasting ties between Québecois.e, French, and Spanish artists and writers, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) has entered into an agreement with La Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image in Angoulême, France, and Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao, Spain for a specialized residency program for comic book authors.
This program involves three cities – Angoulême, Bilbao, and Québec City – that share an interest in promoting literature and comic books. This three-month residency offers artists the chance to spend time together in the three cities, each stay lasting one month.
During this three-month arts residency, the artists are encouraged to discuss and interact, fostering a better understanding of different artistic practices and cultural influences. By successively exploring the cultural environments of each participating city, artists have the unique opportunity to enrich one another by sharing experiences and ideas, stimulating their creativity through cross-influences and a range of artistic approaches. Artists are also invited to share the rich culture of their own city, creating a cultural synergy that fosters personal growth and the creation of a collective creative fabric.
This residency offers artists the opportunity to develop professional relationships and to present mediation activities, public feedback on phases of work, and workshops. The artists selected will also actively participate in the programming of three international literary festivals:
- Le Festival international de la bande dessinée in Angoulême
- GUTUN ZURIA: Festival Internacional de las Letras in Bilbao
- Le Festival Québec BD in Québec City
This residency program encourages the mobility of Québec comic book authors as well as cultural exchanges with artists and audiences from the festivals involved.
Objectives
Conseil's studio-apartment residency program has five objectives:
- To support and stimulate artists by making available to them a suitable environment and the means to produce and disseminate their works.
- To foster artistic renewal for artists and writers by giving them access to a new and stimulating cultural environment.
- To facilitate exchanges of artistic or literary viewpoints and contribute to the formation of durable ties between artists from Québec and abroad.
- To promote the work and career development of Québec artists internationally.
- To develop new networks for artistic creation, production and dissemination.
Residency characteristics
Discipline concerned
Visual arts (comic books)
Target applicants
Artists with at least two years of artistic practice.
Length of stay
The length of the residency is three months, between the end of January and the end of April 2025.
Residency conditions
Throughout the residency – in Angoulême, Bilbao, and Québec City – accommodations and a workspace will be provided for free to the artists selected.
The locations
La Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image
La Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image is a public institution for cultural cooperation (établissement public de coopération culturelle, or EPCC) created, administered, and financed by the Département de la Charente, the French government (Ministère de la Culture), the Ville d’Angoulême, and the Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine. La Cité has three sites: Maison des auteurs, at the walls of the city (over 300 authors hosted since it opened in 2002), the Vaisseau Moebius below on the shores of the Charente, and the comic book museum. It offers wide-ranging programming of exhibitions, events, and mediation activities around comic books and film. Angoulême has been designated a “Creative City” in literature by UNESCO for the extraordinary vitality it inspires in comic books.
Azkuna Zentroa
The Azkuna centre is located in Bilbao, a UNESCO Design City. It is a centre of contemporary society and culture, and its areas of intervention are in line with those of the ICQ: literature, literacy, and digital culture. It features media libraries, work rooms, screening rooms, exhibition spaces, media labs, a bar, a café, a gym, a pool, an auditorium, etc. Located downtown, it receives 10,000 visitors a day. Every year it presents an international literary festival.
L’Institut canadien de Québec
L’Institut canadien de Québec (ICQ) is a private, non-profit, cultural organization founded in 1848. Its mission is to offer access to knowledge and culture through libraries, literature, and literacy. Since 2005, it has administered a program of residencies and is behind the Maison de la littérature, inaugurated in 2015, which has a public library, exhibitions, writing rooms, a comic book workshop, a creative studio, a writers’ residency, and a literary stage. It organizes Québec en toutes lettres, a festival that since 2010 has been offering the general public literary events fueled by curiosity and novelty. The ICQ administers the designation Québec City, UNESCO City of Literature on behalf of the Ville de Québec.
Eligibility
General criteria
Concerned artistic fields
Visual arts (comic books)
Discipline
Visual arts
The visual arts encompass painting, sculpture, engraving, photography, drawing, illustration, mixed techniques, installations, comic strips, performance, textile arts or any other form of related expression.
Profiles
Professional artist
To be eligible, you must be a professional artist and have minimal experience in one of the disciplines supported by the CALQ. The CALQ considers professional artists those who:
- declare themselves to be professional artists;
- produce works or practice an art on their own behalf or offer services for payment, as creators or performers, in disciplines within the CALQ’s jurisdiction;
- have been recognized by their peers;
- publicly present or perform works at sites or in a context recognized by their peers.
For the purposes of this program, the term “artist” also includes writers, storytellers, architects and craftspersons.
- Eligible artists include the Inuit and members of Canada's First Nations residing in Québec.
- Artists must be continuously engaged in their artistic practice and must have received recognition from their community or on their territory as practitioners of their art form, whether traditional or contemporary.
- For the purposes of the CALQ's programs, the term "artist" also includes writers, storytellers and artisans/creators.
Status
The applicant must be a Canadian citizen or a landed immigrant as contemplated in section 2(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. In both instances they must normally reside in Québec and have resided there for at least the preceding 12 months.
Applicants who have resided outside Québec for two or more years are considered ineligible for the Conseil's programs, unless they have maintained their status as a Québec resident.
In this instance, it is the applicant's responsibility to demonstrate his eligibility by submitting proof of participation in Québec's health insurance plan, as administered by the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec.
Conditions
These rules govern all CALQ grant programs.
You can submit up to five separate applications and receive a maximum of five grants per CALQ fiscal year, from April 1st to March 31st. All applications submitted, including those deemed ineligible, are counted in the annual maximum.
Applications with a fixed date:
The fiscal year a grant application falls under is indicated under the application date for each program in the ''Presentation of the application'' section. You can only submit one application per registration.
Apply any time:
Travel, Circulation of Works Within Québec, Circulation of Works Outside Québec:
Applications submitted between March 1st and 31st inclusively are counted for the following fiscal year.
Others :
Applications received between February 24 and March 31st inclusively will be recorded in the following fiscal year.
You may not have more than three projects being considered, supported or under way at the same time.
If you have received financial support from one of the CALQ’s grant programs, you must produce a Grant Use Report within three months after the completion of the project. To be eligible to submit a new application, you must have submitted Grant Use Reports for all projects that have reached their end, and these reports must be approved by the CALQ. The official end date for the project is the date you set when applying.
Failure to meet deadlines for the submission of projects will render your application ineligible.
Ineligibility
- Projects carried out under the supervision of an educational program are ineligible.
- A project that has already been rejected by the Conseil is ineligible for this program.
- A group legally constituted as a not-for-profit or profit-making company or general partnership is ineligible for this program.
- Incomplete applications.
Amount of the grant
The maximum amount of the grant is $8,000.
Artists' or writers' groups (previously referred to as collectives) are not eligible.
Expenses covered by the grant
Grants awarded by the Conseil under the Studios and studio-apartments section enable recipients to cover the cost of personal insurance, travel, living expenses, visa fees and costs related to carry out their projects.
The grant recipient is responsible for obtaining all of the documents necessary for his sojourn abroad, including a visa when the host country demands it.
Applicants do not have to submit an itemized budget to support their application.
Financial support is available for artists with disabilities with a view to ensuring access to CALQ's services. Please complete the relevant section of your official form if you would like to submit an application.
Evaluation of applications
Evaluation criteria
- Artistic quality of the work
- Interest and relevance of the project
- Feasibility of the project
Process
All applications are evaluated on their merits, based on the specific objectives and assessment criteria for each of the program components. The selection process takes into account the comparative value of the projects and the available credits.
The applications are evaluated by a jury whose members must appear in the official roster of resource persons (this roster is approved by CALQ's Board of Directors).
For reciprocity-based residency programs and specialized residencies, a jury commissioned by the artistic director of the foreign host organization reviews the applications. Recommendations are submitted to CALQ's Board of Directors for approval. Decisions are final and cannot be appealed.
Three months after their mandate has been completed, CALQ makes public the names of the Quebec-based jury members.
Éthics
Board members, employees and members of juries and committees of the CALQ are subject to Codes of ethics and professional conduct This link will open in a new window. All must act in good faith in performing their duties and refrain from taking part in any discussion concerning a grant application that risks creating a conflict of interest. Confidential or privileged information transmitted to them may not be used for personal reasons.
Decision
The Conseil will inform applicants of its response to the application approximately three months after the application deadline.
An applicant registered for Mon dossier CALQ will receive an email inviting him to consult his online file to find out the result.
If the application is successful, along with the announcement letter the applicant will receive a document describing the terms and conditions governing the use of the grant.
If the application is unsuccessful and the applicant is not registered for Mon dossier CALQ, the Conseil will communicate its decision in writing.
After receiving the results, the applicant may request the jury's or the evaluator's general rankings of the project for each evaluation criterion.
The CALQ wishes to reiterate that its decisions are final and without appeal. No form of verbal abuse, harassment or intimidation towards its team after a decision is rendered, nor at any point in the application process, is tolerated.
Presentation of the application
Registration deadline
March 28, 2024
An artist who wishes to apply for this grant program must fill out the appropriate application form and provide a complete file, making sure to include all the requisite items.
The date of submission online or the postmark is deemed to be the date of receipt of the application. Incomplete applications and those submitted after the application deadline are not accepted.
Choice of host facility
The applicant is invited to present a project for a specific location and must submit a brief justification supporting his choice.
Application form
Important
The CALQ will not be accepting applications by mail. Mon dossier CALQ This link will open in a new window is the favoured channel for transmitting an application and for finding out the status of your file.
If this transmission mode is not available for the present program or if you cannot use it, the CALQ will receive the application file by WeTransfer. Instructions for sending are provided on the Application form – detail project.
Apply online
Mon dossier CALQ- Grant application form - Details of the project for studios and studio-apartments (Word) (64 KB)
- Grant application form - Details of the project for studios and studio-apartments (PDF) (1 MB)
- Grant application form for studios - Personal Information (PDF) (977 KB)
- Grant application form for studios - Personal Information (Word) (64 KB)
Contents of the application file
For some reciprocity-based residency programs and specialized residencies, candidates are advised to attach a two or three-paragraph summary describing the project in the language of the host country.
The required file contents are detailed on the application form.
Any documents or supporting materials received by the Conseil after the application deadline will not be submitted for evaluation.
The Conseil cannot be held responsible for the loss of submitted items or damage sustained by such items during shipping. Applicants are urged to never send the originals of items or supporting materials required for a grant application.
Subject to the provisions of the Act respecting Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information, the Conseil respects the confidentiality of the documents and information in its possession and of those sent to it.
Applicants must promptly notify the Conseil of a change of address so that mail can be sent to the new address.
Place of registration
Interested parties should submit an application online (Mon dossier CALQ ) or to CALQ's Montréal office, addressed to:
M. Laurent Rozencwajg
Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
1435, rue De Bleury, bureau 300
Montréal (Québec) H3A 2H7
Telephone: 514 864-3350
Toll-free: 1 800 608-3350
Sojourn Abroad
The grant recipient is responsible for obtaining all the documents necessary for his sojourn abroad, including a visa when the host country demands it.
Do not hesitate to contact the cultural team at the Québec delegation, government office or field office responsible for the territory where you will reside to take advantage of the resources that the team can offer you.
Contact information for Québec government delegations, offices and field offices abroad is available on the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie This link will open in a new window.
Obligations and reports
Awarding of grants
- The Conseil determines the amounts awarded taking into consideration the funds available, budgets submitted and eligible expenses.
- The grant will be disbursed in the month following the announcement. However, to proceed with a payment, the Conseil must be informed of the grant recipient's social insurance number. In accordance with tax legislation, a grant recipient is bound to declare the amount of the grant awarded. The Conseil issues a tax slip to each grant recipient and submits the list of grant recipients to the ministère du Revenu.
- For the studio and studio-apartment residency program, the grant will be disbursed two months prior to the beginning of the residency.
- For the studio and studio-apartment residency program, the artist selected undertakes to comply with the applicable conditions and rules, whether communicated by the host organization or the institution overseeing the residency or posted on their website, as the case may be.
For further information…
- The Conseil cannot support the same project more than once. Moreover, the Conseil may not award a grant in respect of the same expenses related to a project already supported under another program of the Conseil or any other organization whatsoever.
- By cashing a grant cheque, the artist enters into a commitment to carry out the project planned and comply with the conditions governing the use of the grant.
- The grant recipient has three years from the application registration date to complete the project supported. The end of this period is the project expiry date. Should the artist fail to comply with this condition, the Conseil may demand repayment of the amount disbursed. Moreover, should the artist die or be disabled prior to completion of the anticipated activity, the Conseil may demand repayment of the grant prorated to the state of advancement of the activity.
Report on the use of a grant
The grant recipient undertakes to submit a detailed report on the use of the grant or the results of the research. This report must be submitted within three months after the end of a project. To be eligible to submit a new application, a grant recipient must have submitted the reports on the use of grants for all projects that have reached their end date, and these reports must be approved by the Conseil. The official project end date is determined by the candidate upon registration.
Visibility and use of the Conseil’s logo
Standards governing visibility
- When the project results in public activities such as exhibitions or publications, the Conseil's logo or a mention of its contribution must appear on any documentation, promotion or advertising materials.
- The grant recipient must comply with Standards governing the use of the Conseil's logo This link will open in a new window.
Further eligibility
Failure to comply with any of the foregoing conditions may jeopardize an artist's eligibility to submit a subsequent application.
Tools and references
Partners
This exchange is made possible with the cooperation of La Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image, Azkuna Zentroa, and the Institut canadien de Québec.
Contact info
The contact information for the Québec government offices abroad (delegations, bureaus, and trade offices) can be found on the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie website This link will open in a new window.
Reference documents
Synoptic table (124 KB) of the studios and studio-apartments eligibility per artistic field and professional experience (PDF).
- Frequently Asked Questions This link will open in a new window
- Code of ethics and professional conduct governing jury and committee members and assessors hired by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (65 KB)
- Glossary This link will open in a new window
- Act respecting Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information This link will open in a new window
- Immigration and Refugee Protection Act This link will open in a new window
- Act respecting the professional status of artists in the visual arts, film, the recording arts, literature, arts and crafts and the performing arts This link will open in a new window
- Policy governing juries, committees and assessors (365 KB)
The masculine form used in this document is understood to designate men and women equally.