Toronto, July 9, 2024 – The Ontario Arts Foundation is pleased to announce that Brady Coyle is the 2024 recipient of the $2,500 Tim Sims Encouragement Award. The Tim Sims Encouragement Award honours a promising Canadian comedic performer who is in the early stages of their career. Brady was selected for the award by the faculty of Humber College’s Comedy Writing and Performance program.
About Brady Coyle
Brady Coyle is a recent honours graduate of the Humber College Comedy Performance and Writing Program. Comedy has played a huge part in Brady’s life from his early years through to his decade working as an outdoor adventure guide – a job that required a constant stream of stories and jokes to entertain clients. This experience led Brady to get on stage and try stand-up comedy while living in Thunder Bay. He fell in love with live performance and decided to return to his hometown of Toronto to pursue comedy professionally.
Throughout this past year, Brady has opened for Danny Jolles, Sam Norton, and Martha Chaves. In 2023, Brady won the Vinny Vinelli’s Comedy Clash for Cash, and placed 3rd in Folk’N Comedy’s Best Set competition. Brady was a semi-finalist in the Comedy Bar’s Comedy Brawl and Absolute Comedy’s Prove You’re A Comic competition. Brady can regularly be seen performing stand-up, improv, and sketch comedy across Toronto.
“It’s a huge honour to win the Tim Sims Encouragement Award, and incredibly flattering to have my name put alongside the hilarious individuals who have previously won this award,” says Brady Coyle. “This achievement has given me the confidence to continue pursuing comedy, and not go back to post-secondary for a fifth time. Thank you so much.”
About the Award
The Tim Sims Encouragement Fund was founded by Lindsay Leese and established in 1995 in the spirit and memory of Tim Sims, a well-known comedic performer, writer, director, and charity fund-raiser from Toronto. From 1996-2014, the Fund awarded prize money totaling $65,000 to young comedians in the early stages of their careers at the annual Cream of Comedy award show at Second City. Beginning in 2015, the $2,500 award is given annually to a graduate of the Comedy Writing and Performance program at the Humber College, School of Creative and Performing Arts and until 2019, to a Conservatory Program Graduate at the Second City Training Program.
Previous Tim Sims Encouragement award winners from Humber College include Sarah Boston (2023), Katie Chin (2022), and Cassandra DeStellis (2021). See the full list of previous recipients.
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For information, please contact:
Bruce Bennett, Executive Director
Ontario Arts Foundation
Tel: (416) 969-7413 bbennett@oafdn.ca
Established in 1991, the Ontario Arts Foundation (OAF) is passionately committed to building long-term support for the arts in Ontario. In 2023-2024, the OAF paid $4.6 million in endowment income and $500,000 in awards and grants.
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