SPECIAL INITIATIVES 2018 - 19

Theatre in the Park

In July 2019, we partnered with Saskatoon’s SUM Theatre to bring Theatre in the Park to Regina. With ASL integrated into the performance, The Young Ones brought out over 100 community members who described it as “truly magical,” “timely,” and “thoughtfully crafted.”

Since then, we have been able to bring Theatre in the Park to Regina for an extended tour starting in 2021. You can learn more about the most recent show here.

Raising Hope: Music and Mental Health

In March 2019, we partnered with the Regina Symphony Orchestra for their second annual Forward Currents festival. Executive Director Risa Payant encouraged a dialogue on the theme of mental health by facilitating a pre-show talk with folks from the Schizophrenia Society of Saskatchewan.

Goodnight (Harvest Moon)

In September 2018, Respond to Racism artist Kris Alvarez offered Goodnight (Harvest) Moon at the Heritage Harvest Moon Festival as an extension to her program work within the Heritage neighbourhood. Regina residents shared bedtime stories at Beaks Chicken, closing the festival on a dreamy note and enjoying homemade cookies and milk.

You can learn more about Kris’s residency in Regina’s Heritage neighbourhood by visiting the Respond to Racism project page.

Social Video Initatives

In November 2018, filmmaker Berny Hi accompanied Communications and Development Coordinator Nena Hawkes on a whirlwind tour of Saskatchewan, traveling to Prince Albert, Saskatoon, and back to Regina in a day to film interviews with staff and project artists who spoke candidly about their experiences partnering with Common Weal and the lasting effect our programming had on them and the participants. Nena then worked with Communications Committee Chair Evie Ruddy to create several promotional videos.

Beautiful Trouble on the Prairies

Our team has long admired the work of Beautiful Trouble, a global network dedicated to supporting creative activism. As an organization that celebrates the intersection between creative practice and social action, we were thrilled when local “troublemaker” Dave Mitchell, along with the Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation, approached us to support the Saskatchewan launch of Beautiful Rising: Creative Resistance from the Global South.

Dave, along with fellow activists-trainers-contributors Juman Abujbara and Nadine Bloch (from Jordan and Washington DC, respectively) traveled to the prairies for a whirlwind week in February 2018. Book launches in Saskatoon and Regina included a panel featuring the team, who spoke about the three-year process of story-gathering that led to their book and insights for creative activists in Saskatchewan. Risa curated a series of performances featuring local social justice-focused artists, including a brand new work, Needle in the Hay, created by Monique Blom and New York-based artist Arantxa Araujo. The evening also included a sample of posters  showcasing the history of protest in Saskatchewan, collected by Don Kossick for an upcoming publication.

Drawing parallels between the work of Beautiful Trouble and the theme of the 2018 Saskatchewan Arts Alliance Congress, “Making Art in Dangerous Times,” we partnered with the agency for Creative Activism for Artists. Four-hour workshops were held in both Saskatoon and Regina. Led by Nadine, these workshops targeted artists and arts professionals exploring: the role of cultural workers and artists within campaigns and movements; advocacy strategies and best practices; resiliency and sustainability while campaigning; tools and tips for effective arts action and action planning.

Ethics of Storytelling

On February 28, 2018, local transactivist Cat Haines published “An open letter to Kelley Jo Burke, Jeffery Straker, and the Globe Theatre” on Medium, an online op-ed platform. Cat’s piece critiqued the Globe’s production of Us, created by Burke and Straker, billed by the Globe as a debut musical that “explores what happens when LGBTQ+ youth come together in a group of peers at a summer camp.” Her critique centred on the casting of a cisgender man to play trans woman Carley and the relevance of cisgendered creators addressing trans issues and identity without the necessary engagement or advisory support from the trans community. In the end, Cat called for a boycott of the play.

The piece was shared widely, but Cat failed to get a response from the Globe theatre or the play’s creators.  On March 8 Cat published a follow up piece, “Dear Ruth,” on Medium. Here, she called for critical engagement with and public response to her concerns from the Globe , stating “as a central hub of theatre and the arts in this city, you help hold space for the community to come together and discuss these issues, to provide an opportunity to further engage with the creators of the work...”

When a response failed to materialize, we worked with Cat and the Regina Public Library to organize a Hot Topics panel discussion on ethical storytelling. The event created space for transgender women’s voices to be heard and allowed for a critical public discussion on identity and representation in the arts community. Smilie, Burke, and Straker were all invited to participate, but did not respond.

“Trans women have literally been screaming about this for years now — that casting cisgender men as transgender women actively perpetuates violence, actively strengthens the societal belief that transgender women are not really women, but men who are acting.” - Cat Haines

Let’s Talk: Navigating Safe Discussions on Racism

In July 2018, Common Weal Community Arts joined SaskCulture, the Multicultural Council of Saskatchewan, and the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild to host Let's Talk: Navigating Safe Discussions on Racism. The event was presented in Saskatoon and aimed to provide best practices on how to safely and effectively challenge racism directed at First Nations and Métis people in Saskatchewan. The event featured intimate conversations that modelled how people can talk about racism with colleagues, family, and friends, and provided language to navigate conversations when confronted by racist misconceptions. Dr. Sheelah McLean and Kristin Marie Enns-Kavanagh started the evening with a discussion on allyship, followed by a conversation between Janelle Pewapsconias and Zoey Roy. The event was live-streamed on Facebook with viewers connecting at in-person gatherings in Yorkton, Swift Current, Prince Albert, and Regina.

Improv for (Re)conciliation

In June 2018, Common Weal Community Arts hosted an improv workshop led by Montreal-based consultant Lacy Alana in an attempt to answer this question. Lacy shared her improv-based curriculum, which aims to strengthen communication and connection by teaching participants how to be active listeners, express themselves clearly, and support genuine collaboration. 

The potential for improvisational methodology to support connection became clear as participants played games that investigated concepts such as status, the sharing of space, bias, and empathy. The experiential workshop and surrounding dialogue is a first step towards future program development aimed at supporting community building and bridging. In fact, tools from this workshop were used by Kris Alvarez for the development of her targeted Respond to Racism programming in Regina’s Heritage neighbourhood.

Australia Research Trip

In late-2018, our senior leadership team travelled to Australia for a research trip prompted by an invitation to speak at the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand’s (AAANZ) conference, Aesthetics, Politics, and Histories: The Social Context of Art.

This conference, which took place in Melbourne, allowed us to explore the theoretical backing for our work. Most affecting was the opportunity to reflect on practices of decolonization. As Saskatchewan’s only professional arts organization dedicated to socially-engaged practice, we often feel isolated from our peers in the field and are hungry for opportunities to engage in a critical discourse. Australia was a perfect fit for this engagement. Our countries share a similar colonial story, manifested in societal parallels such as a legacy of residential schools and Indigenous over-representation in correctional facilities.

Cultural Leadership at the Banff Centre

Then Executive Director Risa Payant was honoured to be chosen as part of the Year Two cohort of Canadian arts and culture leaders for the Cultural Leadership program at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Learning ranged from values-based leadership to developing interdependent networks to people-friendly workplace policies to digging into the current social context and more. Most affecting was an exploration of decolonization with Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures’s Vanessa de Oliveria Andreotti and former Common Weal General Manager Elwood Jimmy as well as ongoing work with race-based caucuses led by Syrus Marcus Ware and sean lee popham. These conversations underscored the ways in which leadership is more than a set of skills; it’s about the parallel personal and professional development needed to commit oneself in service to the broader community.