On July 1, 2022 we held our very first meeting of Niriqatiginnga. The meeting was held outside, on a beautiful day at Chocolatier Constance Popp, one of our favourite places our artists and cultural entrepreneurship projects had been meeting at throughout the pandemic.

To start planning for next year’s arts, cultural entrepreneurship and food security project, we wanted to choose three key areas. We wanted to have a lot of participatory approaches, encourage resilience and develop skills that would be transferable across the cultural entrepreneurship, food industry and arts sectors.

We’re very thankful to have also had a chance to catch up with our local Member of Parliament for St. Boniface and St. Vital, the Hon. Dan Vandal, and to share with him a bit of what we are planning to do. Minister Vandal got to meet with team members Constance Menzies, Jamie Bell and Tony Eetak who has been working on the @1860 Winnipeg Arts group with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Greenhouse.

Our upcoming project, which will is expected to start in 2023, will see local food producers, businesses, Indigenous artists and cultural entrepreneurs exploring ways to tackle northern food insecurity. We plan to study supply chains, learn about the food sector and share traditional knowledge about northern food systems.

If you’d like to learn more about what we’re planning to do, please contact us at niriqatiginnga@gmail.com. We’d really enjoy being able to connect and share our plans for the projects ahead.