Last Thursday the Hand Eye Society was invited into the Ontario Arts Council along with members of Dames Making Games and Bento Miso to speak about the needs of artists in the games community. Mark Haslam, the grant officer for the media arts section, had met with game artists earlier in June at Bento and wanted more of the staff at the OAC to hear about the ways that games are being used as creative expression in Toronto and beyond.

Mark has been actively encouraging game makers to consider applying for the media arts grant — the deadline is November 1st and awards up to $10,000. Notably, he mentioned at the meeting that the 2013 emerging artist media arts application would have a category checkbox for “games”.

The other thing he encourages game makers to do is fill out this survey before this Sunday at midnight — it’s being used to inform the OAC’s strategic plan for the next five years. The more people from the games community give their input the more informed their policy can be. It takes about 20 minutes to do, and as Mark says “The survey is quite targeted, but there are a few open ended questions that people should use to introduce new ideas.” The OAC has a stellar record of supporting artists for 50 awesome years, so let’s give them some data to work with!

Update: The application and guidelines for the November 1 deadline is here.