Quarter of a million dollars for excellence in magic!

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Julie Eng
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Quarter of a million dollars for excellence in magic!

Postby Julie Eng » April 16th, 2015, 9:51 am

Magicana is pleased to announce on behalf of the Slaight Family Foundation the creation of the Allan Slaight Awards to recognize outstanding achievement in the pursuit of the impossible.

Initiated by the Slaight Family Foundation to honour Canadian media mogul and philanthropist Allan Slaight, and his lifelong passion for and contribution to magic, Magicana will distribute, on behalf of the Slaight Family Foundation $250,000, over five years, to recognize excellence in magic.

The Allan Slaight Awards will be distributed across five categories: Sharing Wonder (Live or Digital), Sharing Secrets, International Rising Star, Canadian Rising Star, and Lifetime Achievement.

The Sharing Wonder category will recognize the most innovative performance of magic over the past calendar year, either in live performance or a digital medium. The goal is to recognize exceptional performances, by exceptional artists.

Sharing Secrets will recognize the most exceptional creative, innovative or well-presented (live, in print, or digital) works that advance the study of magic as a performing art. The focus will be on the techniques that magicians use or can use to advance the work. Works related to the history of magic and its practitioners will also be considered in this category.

The International Rising Star award will recognize emerging talent, while a separate award will be given to an emerging Canadian talent.

A Lifetime Award will recognize a person, company or organization that has demonstrated a commitment to advancing magic as a performing art, and made major contributions to that goal throughout their lifetime.

The word “magic” includes ancillary subjects such as illusions, mentalism and sleight-of hand, and any other branch that can be considered to fall under the broad rubric of magic.

The Allan Slaight Awards are international in scope. Magicana will accept submissions from performers, creators, writers, designers, and anyone else with an interest in magic, wherever they reside or perform. One can submit his or her own work for consideration, or the work of any other individual or organization. The portal for submitting works will be added to the Magicana website this summer so that works created in 2015 can be submitted for consideration.

Magicana will publish and promote a “Long List” of submissions under consideration with, where possible, links to those submissions. A panel of three independent judges will review the Long List in each category, and reduce the list to a “Short List” of potential recipients. The judges will then determine a final recipient in each category.

Winners will be announced annually and awarded with the following amounts:

Lifetime Achievement $15,000

Sharing Wonder $15,000

Sharing Secrets $10,000

International Rising $ 5,000

Canadian Rising $ 5,000

The inaugural recipients (for work completed in 2014) will be announced in Toronto on June 27, 2015.

For details, visit http://www.magicana.com/awards
Last edited by Julie Eng on April 16th, 2015, 1:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Matthew Field
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Re: Quarter of a million dollars for excellence in magic!

Postby Matthew Field » April 16th, 2015, 10:26 am

Astonishing.

Allan Slaight's love and devotion to magic, his support of Magicana, writing and publishing the Stewart James books, and many more acts of unhera;lded kindness behind the scenes, only a few of which I am aware of, already make him probably the biggest benefactor in our small world. That there is now a set of awards which bear his name is fitting and yet another wonderful deed of his.

My congratulations and thanks to this generous man, and his wife Emmanuelle Gattuso.

Matt Field


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