REVOLUTION Programming Update: "From Art to Action: Building Anti-Racist Solidarity and Allyship Skills for Artists & Arts Organizations"
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REVOLUTION: Engaging Human Creativity
Over the weeks leading up to the Alliance's 2017 annual conference, REVOLUTION: Engaging Human Creativity, we'll be sharing some of the exciting programming and engaging speakers conference attendees have to look forward to at The Annex and VSO School of Music's Pyatt Hall in Vancouver on Thursday, June 8.
Today we spotlight three speakers—Anoushka Ratnarajah, lee williams boudakian and mia susan amir—who will facilitate a workshop entitled "From Art to Action: Building Anti-Racist Solidarity and Allyship Skills for Artists & Arts Organizations."
Click here for more information on REVOLUTION, and to register at an early bird rate today!
From Art to Action: Building Anti-Racist Solidarity and Allyship Skills for Artists & Arts Organizations
Highlighting the ways People of Colour (POC) move through the world impacted by systemic and interpersonal racism, this anti-racism workshop will provide context and skills for arts practitioners and administrators to practice empathetic and proactive allyship.
Together, we will work to understand how dominant social power dynamics play out in artistic communities, and how we can work individually and together towards undoing these dynamics and fostering an arts culture where people of colour are reflected, represented and centred.
About the facilitators
Anoushka Ratnarajah is a mixed race (Tamil Sri Lankan and white) queer femme, and an artist and organizer. She was born and raised on unceded Coast Salish Territories (Tsawwassen Nation). As a mixed race person from settler/immigrant histories, Anoushka works from a place of unlearning and re-learning the complex histories that dictate the ways in which we move through the world. She believes in the power of storytelling as a way to heal and create new futures where we can breathe deep.
lee williams boudakian (uses they, them, theirs pronouns) is a queer, non-binary trans, Armenian-Liverpudlian mixie with familial ties to Lebanon, Syria, what is current-day southeastern Turkey, and Liverpool, England. Born in Scarborough General Hospital and having moved many times, lee currently works as an interdisciplinary artist, writer, producer and facilitator based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories. Current love projects include Kalik, ShapeShift Arts, and The HyePhen Mag. lee arrives at the work they do as acts of resistance, world&future visioning, and celebration towards liberation and healing.
For nearly two decades, mia susan amir has worked at the intersection of creative and community practice as an educator, dramaturg, cultural organizer, publishing writer, and performance artist creating immersive interdisciplinary works. Born in Israel/Occupied Palestine, mia is a queer Jew of mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardic descent, who is disabled by chronic illness. She has lived most of her life on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh. mia is the Creative Director of The Story We Be, and the Associate Dramaturg at PTC. In her work, mia explores the way sociopolitical events inform and are manifest intergenerationally in the spaces of the home and the body; the narrative hauntings that emerge when our stories go untold.
