The Art Apprenticeship Network, in partnership with TD, brings together 11 Emily Carr student-apprentices with established artists, curators, and cultural workers for project-based mentorships from October – December 2026. The program aims to foster equitable access to the arts and cultural sector by providing emerging artists with hands-on professional experience, mentorship, and opportunities to develop meaningful industry connections.

Get to know the mentor and apprentice teams:

Annie Briard x Violet Eby

Annie Briard’s art career spans over 15 years of international exhibition experience, and her work is specialized in media art, expanded photography and installation. Outside of her career as an artist, she has been teaching at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and has founded and been at the helm of non-profit art organizations.

Violet (BDes) will work alongside Annie as a studio apprentice, supporting the full cycle of artistic production for professional exhibitions and events. Her role will involve conceptual development, planning, production, shipping, and communications for exhibitions, art fairs, and other professional opportunities, providing hands-on experience across various stages of an established artistic practice.

Cathy Busby x Hana Vie Mitchell

Cathy Busby has been making conceptually-based and politically-minded installations, wall-text paintings, printed matter, and performance for over four decades. Her work amplifies overlooked subject matter and voices through recontextualization and scale, often creating collections such as public apologies. Busby built her practice while as NSCAD (BFA 1984) and went on to research pain and self-help culture, earning an MA in Media Studies and a PhD in Communication (1999). Her bold and witty work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in New York, Beijing, Melbourne, and Berlin.

Hana (BFA) will work alongside Cathy as an archival apprentice, supporting the organization and management of Busby’s art archives, the distribution and rehousing of artworks, and the behind-the-scenes planning of large-scale exhibitions. This apprenticeship will provide hands-on experience in archival practices, artwork management, and exhibition preparation.

Emily Hermant x Salma G. Rafi

Emily Hermant (she/her) is a visual artist whose work explores the materiality of communication. Hermant has exhibited extensively throughout Canada and internationally in museums, galleries, and artist-run centres. Her work has been featured in ArtSlant, Espace Sculpture, and Time Out Chicago, among others. She has participated in residencies at Haystack, BoxoPROJECTS, the Burrard Arts Foundation, Ox-Bow School of Art, ACRE, the Vermont Studio Center, and NKD in Norway. Hermant has been awarded grants from the BC Arts Council, Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In 2026, she was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award (Pacific Region) and The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts. She lives and works on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, Canada. Hermant is Associate Professor of Sculpture + Expanded Practices at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and is represented by Monte Clark Gallery.

Salma (BDes) will work alongside Emily as a studio apprentice, supporting the research, development, and production of sculptures for upcoming exhibitions. Her role will involve sourcing and preparing materials, assisting with fabrication and assembly, and contributing to various stages of the production process, providing experience in sculptural development and fabrication.

Hazel Meyer x Erin McCluskey

Since 2005, Hazel Meyer has been working with installation, performance, and text to investigate the relationships between sexuality, feminism, and material culture. Her work recovers the queer aesthetics, politics, and bodies often effaced within histories of infrastructure, athletics, and illness. Recent activations of these ideas have taken place at Contemporary Copenhagen in Denmark, Western Front and the Belkin Art Gappery, in Vancouver, and at Art Metropole in Toronto. In 2023, she was the recipient of the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation VIVA Award, and in 2025 she was longlisted for the Sobey award.

Erin (MFA) will work alongside Hazel as a studio apprentice, supporting various stages of development, production, and presentation for upcoming exhibitions. Her role will involve research, art and print production, documentation, shipping, and final preparations for exhibitions, providing experience across different aspects of Hazel’s practice.

Julie Andreyev x Sara Wiens

Julie Andreyev, PhD, is an artist, researcher and educator living in so-called Vancouver, on the unceded, traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish people, including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. She has exhibited her work locally, nationally and internationally, with her art practice receiving support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, NSERC Mobilize. She is Associate Professor and the co-director of the Basically Good Media Lab at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Andreyev’s book, Lessons from a Multispecies Studio: Uncovering Ecological Understanding & Biophilia through Creative Reciprocity was published by Intellect Books in 2021.

Sara (MFA) will work alongside Julie as a studio apprentice, contributing to the research, experimentation, and production of new artistic approaches and instruments. This apprenticeship will provide valuable experience in an interdisciplinary art practice that brings together land-based materials and sound art.

Landon Mackenzie x Amelie Swayze

Landon Mackenzie is an established Canadian artist, professor emerita, and experienced mentor with a longstanding relationship with Emily Carr University spanning over 40 years. Her five-decade career includes an active studio and exhibition practice, with large-format paintings held in major collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Audain Art Museum, and Vancouver Art Gallery, with permanent works in four Canadian Embassies and successful large scale public art works.

Landon received the Inaugural Ian Wallace Award for Excellence in Teaching (2009), several Canada Council grants, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal (2003) and Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012) for outstanding contribution to Canadian culture, and the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2017).

Amelie (MFA) will work alongside Landon as a studio apprentice, gaining hands-on experience in the professional practices surrounding painting and exhibitions. Through direct mentorship, she will develop skills in studio administration, artwork documentation, image file management, inventory, artwork storage, and exhibition shipping and logistics, drawing on Landon’s extensive career experience.

Miki Aurora, The Social Sculpture Foundation x Inanna Cusi

Miki Aurora is a multidisciplinary artist working across critical research, writing, sculpture, mixed media, and immersive environments. Her practice explores art as a catalyst for collective transformation and liberation. Her work engages with cyberfeminism, the psychological effects of pop culture and media, and the intersections of utopia and dystopia. Recurring themes include psychogeography, the politics of beauty, female archetypes, and esoteric traditions, examining how bodies, symbols, and systems shape contemporary life and imagination.

Inanna (MFA) will work alongside Miki as a Fine-Art Documentation & Fabrication Apprentice to help document and build the sculptural components of our immersive, community-based installations.

Marion Landry x Amélie Jousseaume

Marion Landry is a visual artist whose training in design and career as a 3D Architecture Visualization Specialist inform the way she observes, organizes and translates the pictorial plane. She has exhibited across Canada and internationally since 1999. In 2022 and 2023, she was awarded the University Women’s Club of Vancouver Scholarship as well as the ECU x Griffin Residency Awards (July-Aug 2023). Originally from Montreal, Landry is a Francophone artist living and working on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, BC.

Amélie (BFA) will work alongside Marion as a studio apprentice, and will become an active participant in the day-to-day operation of a professional painting studio, learning practical studio techniques while gaining insight into project planning, documentation, exhibition preparation, and the realities of sustaining a contemporary art practice.

Peter Bussigel x Khalil Alomar

Peter Bussigel is an artist and researcher whose practice explores how emerging technologies shape communication, listening, and our relationships with sound. Working across installations, compositions, performances, creative tools, and writing, he examines how digital and electronic interfaces influence human connection and our experiences of culture, history, and the environment. Through sound and music, his work investigates the ideologies embedded in listening technologies and the evolving relationships between people and the technologies they create.

Khalil (BMA) will work alongside Peter as his studio apprentice, learning both traditional and experimental approaches to electronics and sound through hands-on practice while also considering broader questions of sound, interaction, materiality, esoteric theories of contact, and artistic research methods.

Ruth Beer x Anat Elkayam

Ruth Beer is a Vancouver-based artist, researcher, and Professor in the Faculty of Art and Graduate Studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Her interdisciplinary practice explores contested geographies, changing landscapes, and the impacts of climate change, particularly in Northern communities. Working across sculpture, video, photography, and tapestry, her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, alongside several public art commissions. She has led numerous SSHRC-funded research-creation projects fostering dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and communities, including Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Pipelines, Shifting Ground, and Land, Sea, Sky, exploring the intersections of energy, infrastructure, geography, and environmental change.

Anat (BMA) will work alongside Ruth as a studio apprentice, assisting with the fabrication and preparation of artworks for upcoming exhibitions. She will gain hands-on experience across a range of media, including tapestry and weaving, sculpture, video, and woven photography.

Zoë Chan, The Richmond Art Gallery x Dexi Qiu

Zoë Chan is a curator and writer whose work explores collaborative documentary, storytelling, youth, and food cultures. Since 2022, she has served as Curator at Richmond Art Gallery, organizing exhibitions including FOODWAYS, which travels to the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in fall 2026. She has curated exhibitions at institutions across Canada, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, Kamloops Art Gallery, and Optica in Montréal. Her writing has appeared in C Magazine, Esse arts + opinions, and Momus, and she received the Canada Council for the Arts’ Joan Lowndes Award for excellence in critical and curatorial writing (2015). She holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University and served as the Pacific Region juror for the 2025 Sobey Art Award.

Mandy Ginson is an independent curator, researcher, and writer whose practice focuses on underrepresented artists, art histories, and ephemeral art forms such as performance and dance. She has presented curatorial projects at Western Front, 221A, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, with writing published in C Magazine, Canadian Art, Visual Arts News, and Yishu. She has held positions at several arts organizations in British Columbia, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, Simon Fraser University Art Gallery, Artspeak, and Western Front.

Dexi (MFA) will work alongside Zoë Chan and Mandy Ginson as a curatorial apprentice, supporting exhibition research, accessible and sustainable display design, and exhibition planning.