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Retreat Registration and Fee Payment Change:
Please note the new payment procedure when applying for a retreat. You will no longer be required to prepay retreat fees with your application. After the adjudication process, only applicants who have been accepted to attend a retreat will be invoiced for their fees by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild. Payment will be due two weeks prior to the start of the retreat, and may be submitted by cheque, PayPal or credit card (phoned in to the SWG office). Non-payment of fees before the deadline will result in rejection of your application, without exception. A non-refundable late fee of $35 will apply to all applications received after the application deadline, and will be payable at the time of retreat fee payment.
Read the article Revitalizing Retreats from the September - November, 2011 issue of Freelance.
November 1, 2011
When I think of the Saskatchewan Writers/Artists Retreats, the two words that come to mind are solitude and community, ideas that are opposites; these are the two main things that creative people need other than their hands, hearts, and minds... if you don’t count money.
I personally benefit from attending the retreats. As an emerging writer in my mid-twenties, it gave me access to the community of others who needed solitude to produce art. Friendships began and grew because of it and writers groups. I know of books that would not exist without it. Because of it, Saskatchewan itself has a greater presence in the nation’s literature.
In the past few years, the Retreats have been a life-line for me, a subsidy of my sanity as I try to write through the years of young motherhood, the only place I go where I don’t have to cook, pick up after childhood’s daily tornado, or answer the constant cries of Mummy! -- a place I can listen to my thoughts all day long — a place I can get away and work, but not too far; I am still attached by two psychological umbilical cords, and don’t want to be too far.
And perhaps this is one of the most important things about the Retreat program. It’s here. It’s ours. Every stay at the retreat is a financial grant to a writer -- writers who are mostly local. This is a precious program, a precious place. Other creators, whether from Ontario or British Columbia, envy us the retreats, a program they haven’t been able to create for themselves, possibly because of changing economic times.
The Saskatchewan retreats were established at a time of rare government financial largess — a time that seems to be over. New programs like this have very little chance of being created, especially as governments continue to cut funding for the arts, at the same time as places like the Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus double their fees, making attendance financially impossible for most creators.
Please consider a donation to help maintain the Retreats program, so they can keep on providing a place where creators can step away from life, and look back at it, and understand.
Bernice Friesen
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