Connection Salon Newsletter - The Outsider - Special Issue - Mad Pride Month

Issue 03 | July 15, 2026

Jul 21, 2026

MESSAGE FROM THE COLLECTIVE

Welcome to the third issue of The Outsider, the bimonthly newsletter of the Connection Salon Artists Collective. We aim to create something lively, useful, and a little different—especially for artists working beyond the usual art-world spotlight.

Outsider art is both a practice and a movement. It includes artists—sometimes formally trained—who create despite systemic barriers or limited institutional recognition, even though their impact on contemporary art has been profound and too often overlooked.

We’d love your feedback, tips on what to include in future editions and links to upcoming events.

MAD PRIDE MONTH

Mad Arts is rooted in the Mad Pride movement, which began in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood in 1993. Led by people with lived experience of mental illness, psychiatric survivors, and neurodivergent individuals, the movement reclaims mad as an expression of identity, creativity, and community rather than shame or stigma. It challenges discrimination based on mental difference (sanism) and celebrates neurodiversity as a vital part of human experience. This spirit comes to life in the Mad Pride Festival, a free, month-long celebration of Mad arts and culture produced by the Connection Salon Artists Collective.

Running from June 25 to July 25, 2026, at the Gathering Place Community Centre in downtown Vancouver, the festival features exhibitions, performances, workshops, community events, and a film screening, culminating in a Mad Pride Parade and Cabaret.

In this issue we are featuring 5 performers that are participating in this festival.

ARTIST & PERFORMERS of MAD PRIDE MONTH

MAD ARTS COFFEE HOUSE - JUNE 25

Artist: Actor Stephen Lytton

1. Tell us about your art form/medium practice.

The story that I will share, and shed light on is my mother’s story. She passed it down to our family. She died, approximately about nine years ago. At the age ninety-nine years old. In her hundredth year. Her last words to me, on her death bed, Were: “Speak up David” So that is the Title of the story. I heard her story, years later after her passing.

2. What has art meant to you?

For me art means everything. Art play a major role in my life, and it continues to have an impact to this day. It has helped, and shaped, my character and made me into the person, I have become today. And first, and foremost its been my saving grace, Being a former Residential school survivor. I no longer want to survive but thrive. And art plays a major part in going forward.

3. Any social media links to share. (Website, Facebook, Instagram)

A video play/performance called: Unselled

STAND UP FOR MENTAL HEALTH - JULY 7

Artist: Comic David Granirer

David Granirer, RPC, M.S.M. he/him

Executive Director, SMH Comedy Society

p: 778 883 9242

david@smhcomedysociety.org

http://www.smhcomedysociety.org

DONATE TO OUR CAUSE!!!

https://www.canadahelps.org/en/dn/12643

https://www.facebook.com/smhcomedysociety

MEET THE ARTISTS - GIFTS OF MADNESS - JULY 9

Artist: Spoken Word Poet Nate Nate Nainers

1. Tell us about your art form/medium practice.

I write to enter flow states, and write about what I experience in those states. I’ll write about an idyllic pond; the breeze gently bends the reeds into a bow. I don’t know what it’s bowing to, so I tarry a moment, the reeds softly bobbing. That’s ok, because the flow is not uninterrupted writing. The flow is the breathing with the words - breathing with the scene. Then I catch a duck explosively shitting all over the shore. What a relief, I think, to let go of trying to be a poet.

2. What has art meant to you?

My poems are wild and playful, yet when I write them I am oftentimes calling people home, wherever that may be. For me, home is where I am so safe, comfortable, and loved, I get to put the masks down and be my most unabashed self; Eccentric, caring, and full of humanity. I’ve learned that it’s not so important to say the right thing, than to speak from a good place. In art making, I am returning to that good place.

3. Any social media links to share. (Website, Facebook, Instagram)

www.natenatenainers.com

Instagram & Substack: @nate.nate.nainers

Preorder my book, “Smokin’ Holy Spirits” (Galleon): https://galleonbooks.ca/direct-orders/

MAD PRIDE PARADE & CABARET - JULY 25

Artist: Daniela Elza

1. Tell us about your art form/medium practice.

Lately I have been writing creative non-fiction, but I think of myself as a poet primarily. Words are a pesky, troublesome medium. They come with heavy suitcases, lug around lots of baggage. They shape-shift under my pen. They depend on other words they hang out with. They have alternate and multiple lives. In today’s wars on narratives words too get bruised, transformed. They can hurt, they can heal. They are actions. My practice is to navigate words, fight them, redefine them, heal them, refine them, come up with new words to imagine and grow possibilities for the future.

2. What has art meant to you?

My writing process is a long adventure though ideas. I go after questions circling in my mind. It is a parallel reality I inhabit beside the hustle and bustle of the demands my days. When I can afford to slow down, I manage to clarify the discomfort or sensations I am bombarded with, and hope to arrive at places of understanding, even discoveries and epiphanies. My books obsess over different questions, ideas or images. When I bring a book into the world, I feel it gets quieter in my head, as if I have put some things to rest.

3. Any social media links to share. (Website, Facebook, Instagram)

daniela elza on FB and @danielaelza.bsky.social

Artist: Reid Jamieson & CVM

1. Tell us about your art form/medium practice.

We are a married couple who write, record and perform our own original music, as well as interpretations of songs we love. We have made over a dozen studio album and release singles regularly. A fully independent duo, where we create our music in our home studio and release under our own label. This has its advantages on the creative front, but also means we have to work around the clock doing everything ourselves, and don’t reach the audience we could if we were willing to compromise on creativity or control. And that is every bit as bittersweet as it sounds.

2. What has art meant to you?

They say the meaning of life is to give life meaning...making art does that for us. Music is ‘a safe place to feel’ so when life is particularly difficult or painful, you can cry your eyes out in public and just blame it on the song. Fact is that some things are easier to hear or say if done in song. We like take a complicated subject, like homelessness, and distill them down to something we can understand by feeling it personally, and understand on a level that might lead to action. And that is a gift indeed.

3. Any social media links to share. (Website, Facebook, Instagram)

https://www.reidjamieson.com

https://www.instagram.com/reidjamiesonmusic

https://www.facebook.com/reidjamieson

https://linktr.ee/reidjamieson

DESIRING BODIES - FILM SCREENING - JULY 26

Artist: Director Eisha Majara

1. Tell us about your art form/medium practice.

I picked up a camera when I was fourteen during a family trip in India that lead to dreams of becoming a National Geographic photographer. Years later, I enrolled in a professional photography program but always knew I wanted to be a filmmaker. I made my first professional film at the National Film Board Of Canada which launched my career. The docudrama Desperately Seeking Helen made clear that I loved writing as much as directing and preferred fiction over documentary. I went on to make short films and completed my second feature called Calorie.

2. What has art meant to you?

Art is everything. Art gave me wings. Art saved my life. And continues to every single day. And I am hopeless at doing anything else. Art allows me to bridge the divide between dream and reality and make some meaning of at times incomprehensible experiences. Films are immersive in a way that other art forms aren’t engaging the audience through image and sound using the engine of storytelling to evoke thought, reflection and deeply move people.

3. Any social media links to share. (Website, Facebook, Instagram)

FB https://www.facebook.com/eisha.marjara

IG @eishamarjara | https://www.instagram.com/eishamarjara/

Website: eishamarjara.com | https://www.eishamarjara.com/