Spine-Tingling Engagement in the Pyrotechnic Arts
2025-10-01 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Winnipeg) | Millennium Library, 251 Donald St, Winnipeg, MB, R3C 3P5, Canada
A seminar about multi-sensory accessibility

Join artist Collin van Uchelen, Ph.D., for an engaging public presentation about his innovative art practice. He will show how to translate the light of fireworks across senses in order to make it accessible in non-visual forms, such as the tactile “Fingerworks for Fireworks” description technique. Collin will also discuss his approach to choreographing pyrotechnic displays that are synchronized to music and provide multi-sensory accessibility.

Together, we will explore how firework displays can have an impact that is experienced both in our bodies and in our emotions. We may feel thrilled by the exhilarating intensity at the finale of a show, and we may also feel tingles or goosebumps in emotional moments that touch us deeply. Collin uses the term resonance to refer to this spine-tingling energy. In this seminar, we will explore how resonance can be created with artistic pyro-musical firework displays.

Drawing on his own experience of sight-loss, Collin will describe how resonance provides a pathway to connect with art in ways that are accessible to all—whether sighted or blind. On a broader level, this presentation also invites participants to consider how the low-vision and blind community can be meaningfully included in public displays of art, including events featuring fireworks.

Collin van Uchelen, Ph.D., is a Community Psychologist, Conceptual Artist, and Pyrotechnician based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His work in the pyrotechnic arts explores techniques for translating the light of fireworks into non-visual forms, such as descriptive words, sounds, and tactile representations. Collin’s appreciation for fireworks is informed by his own experience of progressive sight loss from a degenerative blinding eye disease. Currently, he is choreographing a pyro-musical firework display from his unique position as a designer who is functionally blind.

When: Wednesday, October 1st, 2025; 6pm-7:30pm

Where: Millennium Library, Buchwald Room (2nd Floor)251 Donald Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3C 3P5

Curated Exhibitions: Lux Gow-Habrich
2025-10-03 18:00 - 2025-11-28 16:00 | Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba, 329 Cumberland Ave., Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B 1T2, Canada
This October, we launch the 2025 – 2026 season of AANM Gallery Curated Exhibitions. Featuring the work of Emma Cloney, Lux Gow-Habrich, Erika Jean Lincoln, melannie patchwork monoceros, Lora Pallister, and Rae Spoon.

From October 3 to November 28, view the artwork of Lux Gow-Habrich at the AANM Gallery.

About the artist:

Lux Gow-Habrich (星尘) is a multi-disciplinary artist and support worker who channels the histories and material teachings of ceramics and textiles to create sculptures and installations dedicated to the intersections of embodiment, cultural identity, care practices, and processes of rupture and repair. They blend gestural, craft, and community storytelling to redefine our understanding of art and cultural practice as sacred remedial forces capable of profoundly reshaping systems and relationships. Her interest in ritual, commemoration, and the body as an archive, weaves together diasporic experiences of loss and belonging to unearth unspoken individual and collective legacies of disabled, queer grief and empowerment.

LOCATION: 329 Cumberland Ave. (#102), Winnipeg, MB R3B1T2. AANM Gallery accessibility information here.

GALLERY HOURS: Noon to 4:00 p.m. (Please visit our Facebook page for updates on our hours.)

PTE/ART in the lobby: Nicholas Friesen
2025-10-14 08:00 - 2025-10-26 17:00 | Prairie Theatre Exchange, 393 Portage Ave., #300, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B 0G9, Canada
View the artwork of Nicholas Friesen from October 14 to 26 at Prairie Theatre Exchange (PTE), in the lobby, during the show run of “Liars at a Funeral”.

Nicholas’s body of work titled, “Frameworks” (2018) is a collection of hand drawn and inked illustrations based on skeletons in popular culture, coloured digitally and “fleshed out” with photos of textiles.

About the artist:

Nicholas Friesen is a former baby and future classroom skeleton from Winnipeg. His work is predominantly hand drawn/inked and digitally coloured, but he also works with watercolour, gouache, pencil crayon, textiles, and marker.

His visuals have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Uptown, The Uniter, and Stylus. They have also been projected onto the sides of buildings during the Juno Awards and on IMAX screens. He’s made children’s books with Ace Burpee and takes his comic books around the world to various comic art festivals.

In 2024, he was voted “Winnipeg’s Favourite Visual Artist” in the Uniter readers poll.

Viewing the artwork is free; tickets to the PTE show are for purchase. More information on PTE shows here.

Curated Exhibitions: The New Customs • Live at the WECC
2025-11-19 18:00 - 20:00 | West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B 1Z8, Canada
In collaboration with Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba with support from the Manitoba Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, we bring you The New Customs Live at the West End Cultural Centre.

Join us for an evening of incredible music at an amazing venue! This show is free, so bring your family, friends, and loved ones and let The New Customs serenade you throughout the night.

About The New Customs:Hardly afraid of the “F Word”, The New Customs are proud to call themselves FOLK! Deeply rooted in the tradition of capturing a story in a song, the Indie-Folk duo take a bold and evocative approach to songwriting. With two strong voices, guitar, mandolin and fiddle in hand, Emma Cloney & Dale Brown use their anthemic heart and Americana backbone to charm audiences with a bombastic electrifying sound. (source: https://www.thenewcustoms.com/) @thenewcustoms

This show is part of AANM’s Curated Exhibitions 2025 – 2026. For more information about AANM and our events, please visit the link in our bio.

For the WECC’s accessibility info, please check their website at www.wecc.ca/about-the-wecc.

AANM Annual General Meeting 2025
2025-11-25 18:00 - 19:00 | Manitoba
Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba is holding a virtual annual general meeting on November 25th, 2025 at 6:00 pm CST.

You are invited to join us for an evening of reflection on achievements from our 2024 – 2025 activities and our upcoming projects.

To attend, please register here. (https://aanm-agm-2025.eventbrite.ca)

This is a virtual meeting.

Please include ASL interpretation and any other access needs request in your registration.

For any questions regarding this event, email info@aanm.ca.
