QAC welcomes Matilda Aide and summer students

Matilda Aide (she/her) grew

up in the beautiful oak hills just outside of Stirling. She attended Ontario College of Art and Design University earning a Bachelor of Design, majoring in Advertising and discovered a wonderful blend of creativity, innovation and communication. Since leaving OCADu Matilda has worked locally as a Marketing and HR Coordinator and most recently as a Marketing Strategist.

Now in her role here at the Quinte Arts Council as Program Director, Matilda will be bringing her creativity, marketing knowledge and passion for the community together and continue to celebrate the arts and culture of the Quinte Region.

Contact: matilda@quinteartscouncil.org

Through the Canada Summer Jobs Program, the QAC mentors the new generation with employment skills and training. Hannah MacEwen joined the team as the Social Media Community Manager, and Anissa Nielsen as the Special Events Coordinator.

MacEwen attends Trent University for a dual degree program that works towards a degree in English Literature and a Law degree from Swansea University in Wales. She is the current President of their Law and Arts Society and has taken on the task of highlighting their social media presence on campus.

Nielsen is going into her second year at Queen’s University, where she studies life sciences. She is part of the Quinte Symphony, where she plays violin. She has also been a part of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regional Chorus, St. Andrew’s Strings, Front Porch Shenanigans and co-founded Fridays For Future Quinte.

Phil Norton’s artist statement should be: If you live with curiosity and creativity your life will be the story and legacy you give to the world.

Since 1972, when Norton bought his first 35 mm SLR film camera, he has been a photographic artist. This led him to become a writer and, most of all, a listener, observer and storyteller. After getting his degree in environmental science, he embarked on his career as a newspaper and magazine journalist.

Describing it as ‘nerve-wracking or at times an adrenaline rush,’ Norton has covered many police and Indigenous standoffs and a nighttime ride-along with the US border patrol on the California Mexico border. Those were the days of manual cameras with low sensitivity film in a low light situation. He ran with the federal law enforcement agents through cactus with only their flashlights and a light beaming from a helicopter hovering overhead.

In the early 2000’s Norton upgraded his skills and moved toward multimedia, studying web and graphic design at Concordia University. He furthered his studies merging still photography with audio and video - his favourite creative process for evoking emotion. Norton performed five times with a symphony orchestra in the United States. Each required months of learning the classical symphony score, producing a series of images with precise timings to accompany the music.

Always independent and learning something new, Norton took an online Masterclass on documentary filmmaking with Ken Burns, a smart phone webinar with a National Geographic photographer, and in March 2023, a news video bootcamp at the University of Oklahoma.

“My thinking times are my creative times. I find my creative mind needs freedom to wander. My many jobs have included farming, teaching, newspaper editor, stock photography sales, lobbying for the minister of environment, writing on deadline, photographing models for tourism promotion, corporate conferences and leading small group photography adventures to every corner of North America. I have no regrets and look forward to new challenges. I will never retire.”

Belleville Fine Arts