What's New

The Cana­di­an New Music Net­work is excit­ed to call for Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Cre­ative Music Projects to be host­ed on the online Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Cre­ative Music Hub. Suc­cess­ful appli­cants will be pro­vid­ed fund­ing for doc­u­men­ta­tion of an exist­ing project.

Amount of grant: $600.00

Appli­ca­tion dead­line: Feb­ru­ary 27, 2026

Appli­ca­tion form

Dead­line for sub­mis­sion of doc­u­men­ta­tion of cho­sen projects via online upload form: May 1, 2026.

What is Participatory Creative Music? 

Accord­ing to the Cana­di­an New Music Network’s Pub­lic Engage­ment Com­mit­tee, Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Cre­ative Music is a mul­ti­tude of approach­es to cre­at­ing music in which every­one involved, regard­less of their pri­or expe­ri­ence in mak­ing music, has active input in the cre­ative process. Author­ship and deci­sion-mak­ing is shared to greater or less­er degrees, depend­ing on context.

For more infor­ma­tion and clar­i­fi­ca­tion, see Key­word Def­i­n­i­tions.

What is the Participatory Creative Music Hub?

The Hub show­cas­es peo­ple from all walks of life cre­at­ing music togeth­er. What­ev­er you call it – par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cre­ative music, com­mu­ni­ty music, jam­ming, co-com­po­si­tion, impro­vi­sa­tion, music explo­ration, lis­ten­ing games or hav­ing fun with sound – The Hub cel­e­brates music cre­ativ­i­ty for everyone. 

The main cri­te­ria for projects is that all par­tic­i­pants have active input in the cre­ative process, whether they are 4, 40 or 94 years of age, an expe­ri­enced musi­cian or mak­ing music for the first time.

What is an eligible project?

An eli­gi­ble project is a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cre­ative music activ­i­ty already occur­ring in the com­mu­ni­ty, whether on-going or com­plet­ed. Projects may take place in the fields of health care, edu­ca­tion, social ser­vices, pris­ons and more. 

While not exclu­sive to this par­tic­i­pant group, we would like to encour­age sub­mis­sions of projects occur­ring with chil­dren and youth in the com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing inter­gen­er­a­tional projects. Projects out­side of for­mal school set­tings are strong­ly encour­aged, includ­ing those projects that serve chil­dren and youth in excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances. Exam­ples of par­tic­i­pants include, but are not restrict­ed to:

• New­com­er fam­i­lies in com­mu­ni­ty centres,
• Street-affect­ed youth groups or group homes, 
• Patients ages 3–5 years of age in chil­dren’s hospitals, 
• and more!

Eli­gi­ble projects are wide and var­ied. Pri­or­i­ty will be giv­en to facil­i­ta­tors who are sub­mit­ting a project to the Hub for the first time.

See the Project page for exam­ples of Hub projects. 

See Key­word Def­i­n­i­tions for terminology.

Documentation

The pur­pose of this grant is to sup­port doc­u­men­ta­tion of an exist­ing PCM project to pro­vide inspi­ra­tion and tools for user groups of the Hub to make their own music. It is cru­cial that doc­u­men­ta­tion is instruc­tion­al in nature, rather than pro­mo­tion­al. Links to bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion via a CNMN mem­ber page and exter­nal links are pos­si­ble on the project webpage.