June 12, 2020

The articule staff and Board of Directors call on artist-run centres and arts organizations in Montréal to move beyond statements of solidarity against anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, police brutality, and systemic oppression present in our local and national government and society.

Although a few centres and organizations have released statements in solidarity with protestors denouncing police brutality and anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, for many of those who have engaged it has been with minimal attempts to support efforts in concrete ways by, for example, circulating resources or redirecting funds. We are inviting artist-run centres to join us in allowing this moment of heightened popular attention to provoke organizational changes which are actively self-critical and sustainable. As publicly funded organizations, and as spaces for dialogue, creation, and the dissemination of vital ideas and culture, we have a responsibility as arts organizations in Montréal to align ourselves with the struggle for a society in which Black and Indigenous life flourishes, led by Black and Indigenous voices in our midst and internationally.

We are not simply observers to a legacy of racial violence in the United States; systemic racism and white supremacy have a long history in Quebec (for more information you can read the book Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present by Robyn Maynard and follow her on Twitter here) and continue to be present across all sectors of society, including in the arts. Artist-run centres and arts organizations must be publicly and explicitly anti-racist.

But optics are not enough.

It is not adequate to post once a year on Instagram as proof of progressive politics or to rewrite an About section to include a mention of diversity. It is not enough to program Black and Indigenous artists without ensuring an institutional space that is capable of welcoming them. It is not enough to tag on a line about under-representation in a job posting without changing hiring procedures. It is not enough to hire Black or Indigenous staff members without preparing institutional tools to protect their well-being. We must commit to radical, tangible, long-term, proactive support for Black and Indigenous artists, members, curators, and publics.

We call on the Boards, staff, and members of Montréal artist-run centres to invest, or reinvest, in the real structural work of becoming anti-racist organizations. Not “not racist”, but explicity anti-racist. This work happens at all levels: in HR committees, programming decisions, financial distribution, policy writing, staff training, and individual education and accountability. If we claim to support inclusion, diversity, and intersectional feminism and gain valuable social capital with these professed values, but do not use our platforms to address the legacies of racism here in Quebec and across the globe, then it is time for a reevaluation.

If artist-run centres are solely programming Black and Indigenous artists without confronting white supremacy actively in our organizations and consistently using our platforms to support Black and Indigenous lives, we are exploiting the artists’ social capital and failing to meaningfully confront systemic racism.

We all need to take time to think through these questions:

Who is on our Board of Directors?
Who have we hired in the past ten years, for both long term and contractual positions? Are there Black, Indigenous or People of Colour in leadership positions?
Have we committed time and resources towards organizational anti-racism training including integration of workplace diversity training for staff?
Who is on our programming committee?
Who is on our HR committee?
Who is writing our policies? Do we have procedures that accompany these policies?
Does our internal work culture and structure allow for toxic white leadership?
Do we have policies and practices in place which protect racialized staff, artists, and members from aggression and micro-aggression?
Do we understand the labour involved in internal and external anti-racism education whether formally or informally? Who is doing this labour? Are we compensating them adequately?
Do we provide staff and Board members with mental health resources?
Do we follow, learn from, and amplify the work already being done by Black and Indigenous artists, curators, writers, and cultural workers to dismantle systemic racism here in Montréal?
Do we invest in mentoring young Black and Indigenous cultural workers?
Have we set up systems of accountability for white staff and Board members, in order to support the ongoing individual work of becoming anti-racist colleagues?
Have we trained our staff in responding to instances of racism from the public?
Have we cut ties with or demanded institutional accountability when organizations mistreat racialized artists or inadequately handle instances of racism?
Who volunteers in our organization? Who gets paid?

This list is not exhaustive. Here are some ways we can start to answer these questions:

As staff, Board, artists, and members, develop a collective agreement or mandate specific to our history, programming, and other activities, about our commitments and priorities for an intersectional anti-oppressive space, and re-evaluate it often
Update our HR policy and procedures through an explicitly anti-racist lens; if we lack the necessary internal expertise, which comes from the lived experience of racism and resistance, hire a consultant and pay them well for this work
Schedule regular equity and anti-oppression training as a part of our activities for staff, Board, and members. Once is not enough. COCo provides anti-oppression training for nonprofit organizations in Montreal.
Examine white supremacy culture in our organization and set up commitments to regularly evaluate it
Set up conflict-resolution and complaints procedures to live alongside our organization’s anti-harassment policies
Re-structure our staff evaluations to explicitly include space to describe the experiences specific to racialized employees
Normalize organizational self-evaluations focused on racial justice, by preparing a list of questions, like this one or the one above, and return to it frequently
Prioritize Black and Indigenous artists and curators in our programming decisions
Prioritize the safety and well-being of Black and Indigenous artists, curators, and publics over the entitlement of white artists, curators, and publics
Centre Black and Indigenous art, experience, and history in our educational materials and cultural mediation activities
Actively disrupt the presumption that our audience and publics are exclusively white; address and centre our Black and Indigenous publics
Critically examine our sources of funding - what are the steps our funders are taking to address racism in their organization / company?
Redistribute our resources by offering our digital and physical spaces for Black and Indigenous artists, curators, members, and publics to meet in Black-only or Indigenous-only self-determined gatherings
Redistribute our resources by offering our digital and physical spaces for anti-racist activist work, whether that is meetings, fundraisers, performances, etc.
Use our online and offline platforms to denounce anti-Black and anti-indigenous racism wherever it unfolds (on the streets, in schools and hospitals, in courtrooms, in general assemblies, in team meetings…)
Use our online and offline platforms to highlight the work and words of Black and Indigenous artists, writers, curators, and cultural workers
Build alliances with other organizations committed to transformation for mutual support and collective learning and unlearning

And most importantly:

Remind ourselves that any actions taken should come from a position of humility, listening, seeking consent, and consistent willingness to change and be changed
Remind ourselves that a list is not the answer, and we must focus our reflections on how and why; the capacity to listen and (un)learn is an ongoing practice and process that can never be completed

If you haven’t yet started this work, start now. But it cannot be fast-tracked and it cannot happen in isolation. If we are committed to organizational transformation, it is going to require collaboration, long evening meetings, rewritten budgets, slow and non-hierarchical models of decision-making, weekend training, extra reading, new alliances, difficult conversations, extensive research, and frequent pushback. It is difficult and it is an ongoing commitment, but we will do it anyway.

The entire team at articule underlines that the majority of the work that has gone into transforming articule over the years, and the tools we have gathered and learned that inform this letter, have come from our current and past members, staff, and volunteers who are Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, many of whom are women, queer, trans, non-binary and/or disabled. We thank you all for your generosity.

We are also inspired by the pioneering work of leaders in anti-racist work in Canadian arts management, such as Zainub Verjee, Andrea Fatona, Monika Kin Gagnon and Richard Fung, and organisations such as the Centre for Community Organisations, amongst many others.

Signed,

articule
Tio'tia:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal

There are several great resource lists being shared widely in English. For the purposes of addressing a need for anti-racist resource lists in French, we include these here. These lists are by no means exhaustive and we encourage you to continue seeking local resources. We will be facilitating French translations of more resources in the coming days.

LISTE de ressources anti-racistes (Québec)

LISTE - Ressources anti-racistes à destination des personnes blanches (France)

Links of sources cited in this letter:

Open letter to artist-run centres in Quebec:Moving Beyond Statements of Solidarity

Open letter to artist-run centres in Quebec:
Moving Beyond Statements of Solidarity