Intensive Workshop: Anti-Oppression in the Creative Sector

ArtsLink NB is presenting Dreaming Inventive Futures, its first-ever intensive workshop on anti-oppression in the arts April 23 and 24. Many arts organizations are attempting to find ways to incorporate anti-racism and anti-oppressive policies but need some guidance on how to do so in a way that moves beyond tokenism. With this in mind, this is the first workshop ArtsLink NB has offered that is geared not only towards artists, but also toward professionals working for creative organizations.

Carmel Farahbakhsh of Halifax’s Khyber Centre for the Arts and the EVERYSEEKER music festival, will be facilitating.

This two-day virtual workshop continues the series presented to ArtsLink NB members on business development and career-management subjects. Past topics have included budgeting, documentation, and critical arts writing. The decision to hold this workshop virtually was made due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to allow participants to attend from across the province.

Workshop Description

Dreaming Inventive Futures: Anti-Oppression in the Creative Sector is a two-day workshop and discussion space that combines foundational anti-oppressive modalities, peer-based learning, personal reflection, and active discussion as teaching tools. During this digital space, participants will explore approaches to anti-racist curation, responsible and curious storytelling, organizationally care-based artistic practices rooted in disability justice frameworks, address ways to disrupt genre and aesthetic hierarchies within cultural industries, and discuss sustainable methods to intentional cross-practice collaboration.

These themes will be grounded in disrupting tokenism in the arts sector, moving beyond defensiveness and fear in creative work, imagination, and accessibility. The aim is that participants will feel supported and motivated to engage in systems change work within the arts as well as more confident in continuing anti-oppressive conversations in their work personally and professionally.

About Carmel Farabakhsh

Carmel Farahbakhsh (they/them) is a community educator, arts maker, and youth worker. They have collaborated on the Khyber Centre for the Arts board for four years, and are enjoying their new position as co-director of local music festival EVERYSEEKER. They recently transitioned from a five-year term coordinating South House Sexual and Gender Resource Centre to working as the Executive Director at the Youth Project, seeing a direct link between this community work and access to creative spaces and the arts community.

As the Executive Director of the Youth Project, Carmel holds a youth-centric approach to organizational movement and support. Carmel builds their vision from their community education background and aims to apply an anti-racist and trauma-informed framework to their work. They also collaborate and organize with local initiatives, artist-run-centres, and community partners with an aim to create wider 2SQTBIPOC community and support systems within the HRM.

Registration 

The sessions will take place April 23 and 24, 2022. The intensive workshop will be held virtually via Zoom and is free for members of ArtsLink NB. Sessions will run from 9am to 4pm each day. To register, cultural sector workers should send an email to Jericho Knopp, jeri@artslinknb.com, with their name, their field or organization, and a brief description of why they’re  interested in taking the workshop.