Indigenous artist sought for mural

There's a new opportunity available for Indigenous artists across Canada.

The Okanagan Indigenous Music and Arts Society has launched the “Honouring our Stories” Artistic Mural and Beautification Project, in partnership with Kelowna’s Gospel Mission and the Sncewips Heritage Museum.

These three Okanagan-based organizations have come together to support a mural project, with a winning prize of $10,000. The final mural will be created on the rear side of the Kelowna Gospel Mission on Leon Avenue.

Registration is now open for artists to submit previous artwork for a chance to be chosen for the project.

OIMAS and a panellist will review the submissions and then choose the top 10 artists, who will be given an opportunity to submit a concept design for the mural.

"Finalists will be chosen to do a concept, and then out of those, we’ll have a top three that will be selected by a social media campaign and then from there panellists will select one finalist, one person to do the installation,” said Jenny Money, president of OIMAS.

It’s part of a larger project that launched on Jan. 15, which includes the weekly online presentation, “Stories with Sncewips Heritage Museum.”

“This artistic mural installation is meant to be a reflection of the internal work that the Kelowna's Gospel Mission is doing at decolonizing the mission,” Money, a Westbank First Nation member, said.

"It just so happened serendipitously that Okanagan Indigenous Music and Art Society was moved to sponsor a mural installation and recognized that Kelowna's housing insecure and hungry are the most in need of having representation of resiliency and survival, and to honour the fact that Okanagan people are resilient and surviving and in fact still here," she said.

"We just thought that it was a great partnership and that it really promoted our prerogative and the Gospel Mission’s prerogative of reconciliation," said Money.

Artists can submit their art through the OIMAS website. The finalists will be chosen by March 5 and the winner announced on March 29.