Vignette – Redefining Communities Through Art + Design (RCAD), Toronto https://rcadinitiative.org
“STORIES OF NOW” is part of a project ArtBridges is working on with Judith Marcuse Projects’ ASCN (Arts for Social Change Network) and ICASC. It is about gathering and sharing stories emanating from the field now and about what issues and areas of focus matter.
In conversation with: Emel Tabaku, Founder & Executive Director, on January 19th, 2022 and again on March 2nd, 2022
ET: We founded RCAD Initiative 5 months ago and now we’re even running our very own podcast, RCAD Initiative: Interviews with Political Artists – available on both Apple and Spotify! So far, we have received funding from #RisingYouth and the City of Toronto/Trustee Hub to run two of our main programs. Our programming is entirely #byyouthforyouth, with our main presence being digitally. We also see ourselves as a resource connectivity hub as we provide a digital platform for artists, mentors, and mentees to come together and create moments of warmth, and spaces of innovation, creativity and community healing. The Digital Storytelling Mentorship for newcomer & refugee youth is RCAD Initiative’s first program. We launched the first cohort back in December where four dedicated youth mentees up to the age of 30 have been connected to our wonderful storytelling mentor, Sania Khan (she/they), an award-winning filmmaker and human rights advocate. For the past three months, we’ve been running all of our mentorship sessions, creative talks, and collaboration virtually.
If you could tell a story about your community-engaged arts initiative now, this year, what would the story be about? What are the main themes?
ET: Our most successful program is the Digital Storytelling Mentorship which is still going! Youth who share lived experiences of immigration are receiving wonderful mentorship in filmmaking. When all of us come together, we are also connecting on a much deeper level and exploring our feelings of community belonging through digital storytelling. We’re currently all based in Ontario. The other beautiful aspect of this program is that as we are all coming together to develop our individual creative skills and collaborate through a digital space, we are simultaneously transforming our ideas of what it takes to build online communities!
What are the main issues your community-engaged arts initiative faces? (e.g., social justice, environmental justice, pandemic-related, operational, financial, HR)
ET: The fact that the Digital Storytelling Mentorship program launched during the pandemic means that everyone is still navigating this tremendous shift and its effect on our lives. We have regular meeting times, but we’re always mindful of there being schedule conflicts as everyone has had to transform in unique ways to adapt to the new reality we are currently facing. I mean, imagine that we were born out of and continue to exist and connect entirely through the digital space! This alone has given us the chance to rethink our ways of art production in the pandemic. On another note, I do think that there’s quite a huge responsibility being placed on our mentor, Sania who has been so diligent and thoughtful in providing accommodations to all mentees. Many have their own preferences in the ways they choose to connect with others online, for example some folks are uncomfortable with the camera on, some prefer to mute themselves so they opt to exchange their thoughts via the Zoom chat function – we’re mindful of this because we recognize the vulnerability that arises when navigating technology.
How has your initiative been addressing these main issues?
ET: We’re providing accommodation, whether it be through more planning, more regular check-ins with the mentor and mentees – we talk things out! What we realized once we launched our first program was that some mentees had more advanced skills than others which meant that Sania had to tailor her mentorship curricula to individual levels of digital knowledge. We also look at the mentees’ different artistic backgrounds. Overall, a lot of accommodations have been made, slightly changing the program as a result. We ended up asking our granters for an extension, of which was approved! The Digital Symposium highlighting all of the works that have been produced throughout the mentorship is expected to launch a week from now! So excited to see what our youth will be creating and sharing with the public! I do hope that in the future, we provide programs with hybrid forms of engagement.
How has the community of participants that your initiative engages with evolved in the past year (if at all)?
ET: Because we are quite new, there has not been much change. We started out at the end of October 2021, and being in a digital space, our programs are run virtually. There hasn’t been much of a shift in programming either and in the ways we engage with our online communities. We were able to build a brand identity as an NPO delivering digital programming so our community expects similar online opportunities to connect and grow. Of course, we are hoping to meet in person as we are in the midst of planning and launching our third program, the Creative Art Entrepreneurship Hub funded by the City of Toronto/The Neighborhood Group (TDE Resident Grant). Things will change when we meet in person for sure! This could be for the better as seeing art in-person is a completely different experience but I know that many of us will prefer to continue some of our meeting sessions online.
How is your organization engaging with your community right now? (Logistics, pandemic public health and safety guidelines & policies, changes in the way we gather)
ET: It’s all digital – entirely – the marketing, communications, community partnerships and collaborations that promote our work – and we do the same for them. We deliver digital programs; we’re more involved in digital community arts and attract creatives because of this brand identity of which we’ve been able to establish. We were able to expand our team to 5 volunteers and 1 advisor who were all recruited digitally, and that is how we have connected and collaborated and that is exactly how we expect to run things moving forward.
RCAD is amplified through non-profit orgs’ social media, we share other’s work too. We create the social media post, do all the sharing, and then tag multiple accounts hoping that they will repost our work! « Youth are spending the majority of their time online, that’s a fact.”
We use social media, from Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn; Instagram is by far the most popular platform to build community collaboration whereas LinkedIn has been successful in helping us recruit ideal volunteers for the opportunities we’ve posted online. We use a lot of hashtags, which have to be relevant for them to be effective, and we also collaborate with community arts organizations who end up promoting our posts because they will receive notifications once one of our posts is up. There are no official partnerships, no official conversations, but things are being reshared, reposted and promoted! We don’t set up a zoom meeting, or conference calls. Our digital outreach across social media is all happening through quite informal ways! For example, to find our digital storytelling mentor, we reached out to about 15 not-for-profits and roughly 40 people re-shared our Hiring Call – we are a part of a cycle of sharing and reposting and this form of digital engagement is how we build our online audience and presence. We don’t need to make calls to staff at community centres to connect with whoever’s working on their social media communications to share our posts. It is kind of understood that once you tag a non-profit arts account online, you are asking them to share your post across their networks! That is how we got Neighborhood Arts Network, Xpace and a few other organizations to amplify our work!
Algorithms are set up, you can filter out all the other posts. We have been using our own hashtag, #RCADInitiative across our platforms. People are coming to RCAD because of our LinkedIn presence, and all of the volunteers have been recruited this way. We have never needed to use platforms such as Volunteer Toronto, or Charity Village.
Right now, we have 149 followers on Instagram, 156 on LinkedIn and 36 on Facebook. The numbers are expected to grow and we are eternally grateful to all of our community members who continue to share our work with others! We have been able to redefine what it means to be a part of a community by exploring and creating spaces of genuine connection and empathy online.
What are one or two new projects your initiative implemented this year?
ET: Everything is new – so far, we have the Digital Storytelling Mentorship, our Interviews with Political Artists podcast where 3 episodes have so far been released, the Creative Art Entrepreneurship Hub to launch by the end of this month, and something very exciting coming along… We are expanding our programming to children, as one of our talented volunteers is currently finishing up writing a short story to be illustrated by our wonderful Digital Illustrators on board, Stephanie and Sofia! You can always stay up-to-date with our recent work by following our social media, @rcadinitiative.
What is your initiative doing new–digitally–compared to pre-pandemic?
ET: N/A, we were born during the pandemic.
Is there a recent achievement, wonderful moment, or quote you’d like to share about your initiative or its impact?
ET: So much has been happening in such a short time! The programs we have are exactly what the community wants and needs because so many artists have applied to get involved, and so many volunteers have been wanting to join the team! This shows that what we do is needed by the community and this is what gives us motivation and inspiration to continue doing the work we do!
We utilize the digital realm to build spaces where youth are equipped with the creative tools & resources to become community changemakers, advocates and artivists – working on social change through art + design.
In conversation with Seanna Connell, ArtBridges sconnell[at]artbridges.ca
