Plug In ICA 2025 Summer Institute call for applications (Deadline)

This year’s iteration of Plug In ICA's Summer Institute will be led by Rodney LaTourelle and Louise Witthöft. It will run from August 11 to August 21, 2025. Each day of the Summer Institute begins with a collective “Story Time” – a shared reading that grounds us in terms of visibility, care, interconnection, and resistance. These sessions set the tone for the day, offering poetic, political, and philosophical entry points into the week’s activities. Throughout the program, we will be joined by invited special guests that expand on our discussions through creative work and physical experience. Participants will further have the unique opportunity to work in creative ways with salvaged materials, such as old concrete, bricks, and glass, from the former Hudson’s Bay Company building, which is situated across the street from the gallery and currently undergoing renovation by the Southern Chiefs' Organization. Further working in collaboration with the workshop at the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology, University of Manitoba, recycled materials will undergo artistic transformations, such as through molding, casting, and concrete-forming, enabling embodied discussions around the HBC’s extensive colonial legacy with an opportunity for awareness and critique. The Summer Institute will conclude with an Open Studio exhibition/performance at Plug In ICA featuring a collective landscape of cast and recycled objects. This shared process – of observing, collecting, moulding, and casting – becomes a way to engage with unseen systems, contested histories, and sustainable futures, in both material and metaphor.

There is no fee to participate in Magic Creek but Summer Institute participants will be responsible for their own travel and accommodations while in Winnipeg.

Visit our website, plugin.org to apply.