Kingston’s Birdgirl Arts finds comfort in portable community
“The grant feels like a push to make you work on parts of your business that are your least favourite to work on often because you understand them the least,” says French.
In a life marked with resets, art has always been a constant for Sasha French, an artist and owner of Birdgirl Arts in Kingston. Her husband’s military engineer career has taken them from Florida – where they met – to North Carolina to Fredericton and Kingston, where they now live. It has its perks, says French. “I’m so grateful for all the things that I get to do because of how much we move and how much we get to experience and explore,” she says. “But it is hard to pick up and start over all the time.”
Throughout her career as a dancer, French balanced restaurant industry gigs, nannying and bartending with short contracts choreographing or teaching. But after a few years bouncing around the U.S., they made the move to Kingston and American-born French didn't have a work visa and felt lost and unsure of what to do with her time. “I've always painted – I think choreography and painting are really the same… there are technical differences but its composition, line, and lighting, which is the same if I was working with dancers on a stage.”
French didn’t intend for the decision to kick off what she calls her “painting years” but people took interest in her work and her community grew. “I started making an excessive amount of work.” They had a child and picked up and moved out to Fredericton. French threw herself further into her work, renting a small studio, Birdgirl Arts, in downtown Fredericton. When the pair returned to Kingston, French brought with her a small community. She re-opened Birdgirl Arts, a studio and gallery in Kingston. But her approach to art has shifted, she’s gotten more savvy, developing an e-commerce site. “Part of that is so I don't actually have to leave that community behind,” says French.
As she immersed herself in the community, she came across Digital Main Street, a program which combines grants and one-to-one support from the Province of Ontario alongside partners to help main street businesses strengthen their online capabilities and plan for the digital future. French applied for a $2,500 Digital Transformation Grant and received it alongside some digital training.
With the digital training, French is making small improvements to parts of her website – like SEO – to help grow her digital community alongside the people that come to her studio and gallery space. “The grant feels like a push to make you work on parts of your business that are your least favourite to work on often because you understand them the least,” says French. Through Digital Main Street she feels a bit more connected with her community and the Chamber of Commerce. At a recent Chamber of Commerce event, French says she met a videographer and documentarian and hired them to make a video about her and her business.
“These community events are a great way to build up that entrepreneur side of like being an artist,” says French. Every step she takes seems to fit within the ongoing narrative of her life – that perpetual impermanence – but the next move will feel different. Through e-commerce French seems able to preserve a small part of the places she and her family leave behind. “But I can't imagine not having a studio out of the house now.”
If you’re looking for an original piece of art, or to connect with French you can visit Birdgirl Arts here.
To learn more about the Digital Transformation Grant, and how it can help your business visit here.
Digital Main Street was created by the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) with direct support from the City of Toronto. DMS is also supported by a group of strategic business partners, including Google, Mastercard, Shopify, Meta, Intuit QuickBooks, Square, Lightspeed, Ebay and Canada Post.
Continued investment from the Province of Ontario, through the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade (MEDJCT) has allowed the ongoing expansion the Digital Main Street Platform in order to support more businesses going digital across Ontario.
