Artist and professor Tara Cooper is the City of Kitchener's 2025 Artist in Residence. Her residency is an experimental opportunity to develop and site a permanent public art installation at Doon Pioneer Park Community Centre. Inspired by the idea and symbolism of a potluck and the folktale “Stone Soup,” which emphasizes the power of cooperation and generosity, Tara hosted a series of hands-on activities at Doon Pioneer Park Community Centre. Visit our Artist in Residence page to learn more about her work and the progress of the public art installation.
Calls for proposals
Kitchener's arts and creative industries programs include many opportunities to apply for projects and opportunities that are designed to share or elevate artists' practices.
On this page:
Current calls for proposals
Explore the City's open calls for arts-related programs and projects. We regularly have calls for submissions or expressions of interest for the City's annual art programs, public art competitions and other opportunities.
Check back or subscribe to the Kitchener Arts newsletter to be notified when we add new calls for proposals.
Artist in Residence at Doon Pioneer Park Community Centre
Public artwork for Mill Courtland Community Centre
In April 2025, Council endorsed the jury selection of Swoop by Michelle Purchase and Agnes Niewiadomski as a new public artwork included in the renovation and expansion project currently underway at Mill Courtland Community Centre, following a three-stage open call competition.
Swoop will create a murmur of swallows above the community centre lobby area, reflecting a sense of motion and communal flow, with each bird woven out of locally sourced willow branches. Swallows and willows are symbolic of stability, resilience, protection and renewal.
The artists hosted a series of workshops in late 2025 and early 2026 for community members to contribute hand-woven swallows to the installation.
Swoop is planned to be installed in the renovated community centre in January 2027.
Downtown Kitchener has a distinctive energy that makes it unique, special and instantly recognizable. We are working with local artists selected through an open call for proposals to reflect this energy in artwork for vinyl banners on streetlights throughout downtown Kitchener.
Public artwork for Upper Canada Park
An invitational competition was held in summer 2025 to develop a new artwork for a pedestrian flowthrough and gathering area in an upcoming renovation, which will add new washrooms, improved parking options, shade structures, benches and pathway areas to the park’s five flood-lit baseball diamonds, skate park, playgrounds and trails. A jury selected Javid Jah & Alex Akbari of JAH Qube Studio’s The Seams, which imagines a composition of steel tubes and 275 triangular stitches that will form a 7’ diameter baseball shape, implied by its negative space and presented on an exaggerated home base-shaped plinth.
The Seams was endorsed by Council in October. The sculpture’s production, installation and unveiling will coincide with the completion of park upgrades in October 2026.
Land acknowledgement
The City of Kitchener is situated on the traditional territory of the Chonnonton, Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee Peoples. We recognize our responsibility to act as stewards for the land and honour the original caretakers who came before us. Our community is enriched by the enduring knowledge and deep-rooted traditions of the diverse First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples who live in Kitchener today.