The SELFIES (Seeing English-Language Families in Engaging Stories) Project: and how you can win $100 by suggesting a favourite work of art!

Last winter the Secretariat for Relations with English-speaking Quebecers approached ELAN and six other community organizations (representing heritage, youth, seniors, and diversity) about a project idea to explore community identity through works of art. ELAN immediately signed up. This project offers an excellent platform to showcase works that have been inspirational and can stimulate conversations about how we deal with current challenges. We’ll be sharing more details about the SELFIES (Seeing English-Language Families in Engaging Stories) project as it evolves, which is in part determined by Covid-19 and what kind of in-person activities will be possible.

The first phase of the project requires YOUR input. Send us the name of a work of art by an English-speaking Artists who has inspired you, encouraged you, enlightened you or made you feel that someone else shared a piece of your reality. It could be a novel, a film, a play, a dance performance, a song or a painting. The work of art can be venerable or brand new. The only criteria is that it made a strong impact on you.

Send us the three things:

Name of the artist.
Name of the work.
A statement about why this work is important to you.

Your suggestion will help lay a solid foundation for the SELFIES project and YOUR name will be entered to win one of five $100 gift certificates. Send your suggestion to submissions@quebec-elan.org with ‘SELFIES Project’ in the subject line. You can make more than one submission if you have several favourites you’d like to share.

Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.

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Land Acknowledgement