Tuesday, November 26 – Saturday, November 30, 2025
FREE
WhatNext: New Gen Artist Symposium is a virtual event hosted by Gallery 44, designed to support emerging artists aged 16–35 as they navigate the early stages of their careers. Through a series of targeted workshops, the symposium offers guidance on freelancing, identifying opportunities, developing professional writing skills, contemporary approaches to photography and refining professional practices. The event concludes with pre-registered virtual portfolio reviews, where participants can share their work and receive personalized feedback from artists Beau Gomez and Camille Rojas.
This program equips new-generation artists with the skills, insights, and professional connections essential for growth in the arts.
Image courtesy of Celeste Ovita Cole
Explore strategies for entering the industry of commercial photography while maintaining mental health. This workshop will address key industry topics such as reaching out to new clients, assisting established photographers, and understanding how to quote projects—as well as insights into finding your process and maintaining creativity and motivation. Learn how to recognize when to take breaks, prioritize self-care and seek support—all crucial for building a sustainable freelance career. Learn how to create a solid foundation that supports both professional growth and personal well-being in the long term.
Steph Martyniuk is a dynamic commercial, lifestyle and product photographer based in Los Angeles and Toronto. A 2012 graduate of Sheridan College, she further honed her craft through an enriching internship with renowned photographer Ryan McGinley in New York. Known for her distinctive use of colour, symmetry, and negative space—Steph's photography captures an unmistakable energy and vitality, infusing each image with its unique character, regardless of the mood. She values a collaborative approach when working with talent, aiming to blend her vision with their natural movement to achieve a harmonious and authentic result.
Beyond her commercial work, Steph is deeply committed to mentoring the next generation of photographers. As a participant in the BIPOC Photo Mentorship Program and a mentor to students from her alma mater, Sheridan College, she actively supports and guides emerging talent in the industry.
Join us for an introduction to professional practices in art making, arts working and navigating art communities. Learn about resources for emerging practices, professional development, exhibition opportunities, contract literacy and how to avoid exploitation in professional endeavours. This workshop demystifies arts culture by making space for honest conversations about the realities and collective experiences that come with pursuing art as a professional practice.
Philip Leonard Ocampo is an artist and arts facilitator based in Tkaronto, Canada. Ocampo’s multidisciplinary practice involves painting, sculpture, writing and curatorial projects. Exploring worldbuilding, radical hope and speculative futures, Ocampo’s work embodies a curious cross between magic wonder and the nostalgic imaginary. Following the tangents, histories and canons of popular culture, Ocampo is interested in how unearthing cultural touchstones of past / current times may therefore serve as catalysts for broader conversations about lived experiences; personal, collective, diasporic, etc.
He holds a BFA in Integrated Media (DPXA) from OCAD University (2018) and is currently a Programming Coordinator at Xpace Cultural Centre and one of four founding co-directors of Hearth, an artist-run collective based in the city.
Farihah Aliyah Shah will share tips and strategies on where to find opportunities for exhibitions, grants, residencies and fellowships—and what is needed to complete applications. The session will focus on navigating the early stages of a creative career, with insights into how to craft strong applications and avoid common pitfalls. Shah will also explore strategies for overcoming application fatigue and managing multiple deadlines. Participants will have the chance to ask questions about their ongoing applications and engage in an open dialogue on the challenges and triumphs of pursuing artistic opportunities.
Farihah Aliyah Shah is a contemporary lens-based artist based in Bradford (Treaty 18). She holds a BHRM from York University and a BFA in Photography from OCAD University.
Shah’s research-based practice explores identity formation through the colonial gaze, forced migration in relation to labour, goods and services, race, connectivity to land and collective memory. Shah was the 2019 recipient of the John Hartman Award, long-listed in 2022 for the New Generation Photography Award and the 2023 recipient of the CCI x WOPA Fellowship at the Perez Art Museum of Miami. Shah has exhibited internationally in Asia, Europe and North America.
Sometimes, we have to write for our careers, and sometimes we have to write for ourselves. This conversation with Joshua Vettivelu will explore the role of writing within an artist's professional practice (including but not limited to artist bios, artist statements, grant applications, CVs, etc.) and writing that is generative for a studio practice. Participants are encouraged to bring their questions about their own writing.
Joshua Vettivelu uses video, sculpture, and installation to explore phenomenological experiences of citizenship. By examining how neoliberal subjecthood is mobilized within Canadian citizenship, Vettivelu examines the conditions that render one’s humanity legible to a state and its citizens; tracing the thresholds of empathy that rationalize violence against those whose humanity is rendered illegible.
Vettivelu is currently pursuing their MFA in Sculpture at Concordia University. They have previously worked as the Visual Art Manager for Workman Arts, the Managing Director of Artspace TMU, and the Director of Programming at Whippersnapper Gallery.
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Interested in incorporating digital tools like CGI, video games and photogrammetry into your photographic practice? Artist Benjamin Freedman shares his creative process, from concept to final artwork—showcasing new works that explore themes of memory, nostalgia and childhood—while discussing the tools, software, challenges and rewards of working with digital methods. Whether you're an art enthusiast, a fellow artist, or simply curious about digital art, this workshop highlights how technology can be used to preserve, reconstruct, and reinterpret personal and collective experiences.
Benjamin Freedman is an artist whose practice spans multiple mediums including photography, video and computer generated imagery with an interest in the restorative potential of photographic research and play. He received his bachelor's degree in photography at the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) in 2013 and his Masters at The Ecole cantonal d’art de Lausanne in 2023. While probing the relative truths and deceptions of photography, he purposefully adopts visual vocabularies from cinema and television in an effort to create expanded documentary projects. He self-published his first photography book in 2015, and has exhibited extensively across the greater Toronto area. He has shared his work internationally at the Aperture Foundation in New York City, Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Foto-Undustria Biennale in Bologna and in the Riga Photography Biennale in Latvia. He recently presented work at the Images Vevey Biennale, 2024 and at Vontobel in Zurich, Switzerland.
Beau Gomez is a lens-based artist whose practice is informed by ideas, challenges and conversations around cross-cultural narratives as they relate to positions of community, and of otherness. He is interested in activating storytelling and the realm of possibility it offers: as a vehicle for illustrating memory, as an operative point of tension and affect, and as a radical exercise in holding space. Traversing visual and verbal material, his work is grounded in image-making as a conduit between individual and collective history, giving permission to shared means of learning, nurturing and renewal. His work has been exhibited in Canada and internationally, including Trinity Square Video, Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto International Film Festival, Centre de la photographie Genève, and The Whitney Museum of American Art.
Camille Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in film, photography and performance. Her work is informed by experiences traversing through life and the hyperfixations that sometimes come from it and the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which the way in which. Recent interests include: X, Y & Z.
The Emerging Digital Artists Award (EDAA) is Canada’s first digital art award designed to foster experimentation in the work of emerging artists and create opportunities for those working in digital media. Resisting the notion that screen time lacks space for critical engagement, the EDAA champions a new generation of digital creators who challenge us to see the world through a different screen.
The next call for applications launches in April 2024 - visit the EDAA website to learn more and follow @edaa_eqb for updates.
The EQ Bank Scholarship awards one OUTREACH Symposium participant with enrolment in the Low Res program and facilities credits to prepare new work for inclusion in the Low Res exhibition. Low Res is an eight-session program to develop advanced visual literacy through group discussions, critiques, creative experiments, writing exercises and field trips. Low Res helps emerging artists push the boundaries of their practice and develop connections in the Toronto art community with a small, supportive group of peers. The EQ Bank Scholarship is open to all participants from the OUTREACH, OUTREACH Symposium and BIPOC Photography Mentorship to apply.
Course Timeline
Eight Sunday sessions (11:00 AM-5:00 PM) from May to June. The course culminates in a group exhibition presented in Gallery 44's Production Gallery in July.
Includes
Gallery 44 membership
A spot in Low Res Intensive Course ($650 value)
$350 (CAD) production/facilities credit at Gallery 44 to prepare new work for the Low Res Exhibition.
Free studio/camera/lighting rentals at G44 (during the course)
Deadline: January 31, 2025
Whats Next: New Gen Online Symposium is made possible through the support of
