Art Matters is a non-profit, student-run, arts festival that celebrates and supports the developing talent housed at Concordia University. This year, the Art Matters Festival will host eight art shows throughout the month of March, showcasing an array of interdisciplinary student art works ranging from traditional mediums like drawing and painting to more experimental forms like sound art and performance. Since its inception in the year 2000, the festival has become a key organization for the growth and celebration of art, community, and education at Concordia University and throughout Montréal. Run entirely by students, the festival connects emerging artists and curators with established art institutions across the city, providing students with unique experiential learning opportunities that focus on skill development and professional growth.
This year, the Art Matters Festival is pursuing an ecologically sustainable method called Risograph printing to produce our printed promotional materials. We will use this technique to generate our festival program booklets, posters, outreach materials, and show texts.
As a festival devoted to the arts, we appreciate the physical and tangible. Art Matters is committed to the production and archive physical documentation of our art and operations. We generate a large amount of printed media each year through outreach and promotional materials like our program booklets, posters, and flyers.
Our festival program booklets are an integral part of our printed media that accompany the festival shows in the month of March. Each year Art Matters hires and collaborates with our graphic designer, photographer, copy editor, and Board of Directors to produce a program that is both educational, beautiful and aligns with our theme. This year’s theme is “Unstable Grounds”, which invites students to draw back to our festival’s foundational spirit of community in the face of shifting foundations and societal uncertainty. As the executive team, we are exploring this theme by developing programming that focuses on social, physical, spiritual, and ecological sustainability. We welcome artists arriving from a wide range of backgrounds, experiences and mediums and strive to combat uncertainty by providing diverse methods of support to sustain a healthy people, community and planet. We will explore these themes through the production and contents of our festival program booklet and promotional materials as well.
We will be printing our program and posters using a Risograph printing service in Montreal called NO GLOSS. Risograph printing is a format of commercial printing that uses special machines and soy based ink, with fully recyclable ink cartridges. It requires no heat to print and works best on recycled paper. This information, alongside other sustainable art-making resources, will be showcased within the programs. These programs will also feature the artists and curators that create works aligning with our theme, that address issues of social sustainability while existing in a time of immense uncertainty.
Alongside sourcing local and sustainable printers in this process, we would like to involve and compensate as many students as possible. We have created a paid contract position for one student paper maker to create handmade paper for our festival. They will turn this paper into bookmarks for our programs, festival map inserts, and large sheets to print our show texts and artists’ biographies on.
We appeal to SAF to help us fund this sustainable printing venture. This year, Art Matters has been put into a more precarious financial position. We have applied to the CSU for a fee levy increase, which required us to pay for a $3200 professional financial audit. This audit was an intense financial burden to our festival and has eaten into our budget. With help from the SAF, we would be able to pursue more sustainable and costly print methods despite our recently reduced budget.
YEARS FUNDED
2025
AMOUNT ALLOCATED
$2,745.80