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“If I can’t bring my culture, then it’s not my revolution. If I can’t bring my ancestors, then it’s not my revolution. And if it’s not our revolution, then let’s build a new one.”

Kai Cheng Thom
I Hope We Choose Love



We are interested in receiving your suggestions for additional resources to showcase. Please write to us at info[at]postmarginal[dot]ca.

Creative

Brooke Leifso: The Ethics of Intersectional Practice

Crip artist, academic, and activist Brooke Leifso is creating actionable changes in her community. She tells two accounts—one as an Expressive Arts Practitioner and the other as the only disabled artist in a traditional theatre rehearsal process.

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Theatre Replacement: Urban Rural Connections

This year-long project aiming to generate interregional dialogue between artists based in Canada and the UK proposes a unique creation model and prompts that could be reformatted to collectively create across other marginalities as well.

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Rumble Theatre: Relational Contracting Template

This document helps companies, independent artists and producers to outline a mutual understanding for their creative work together. It includes Carmen Papalia’s “The Five Tenets of Open Access,” as well as a template for a company to craft its own Letter of Inclusivity.

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Rumble Theatre: Making Friends — An intercultural exploration framework in practice

This report describes the process Rumble Theatre underwent to develop an authentic relationship with community partners in 2019. The documentation is helpful in engaging a community with whom you wish to work and, specifically, with whom you wish to create work.

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Array Ensemble, SMART Lab & The Music Gallery: Unveiling Emoti-Chair

In 2009, Array Ensemble held a concert held in Toronto that demonstrated and explored new ways of hearing. This concert was the result of ongoing auditory research that was being done at X University (formerly Ryerson University)’s Alternative Sensory Information Displays (ASID) project, including the development of the Emoti-Chair.

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VibraFusionLab: An Innovative Centre for Arts-Based Vibrotactile Research and Creative Practice

VibraFusionLab is a media arts centre based in London, Ontario focusing on inclusive technologies that have the potential of expanding art-making practices in the d/Deaf, blind, disabled and hearing communities, and for creating more inclusive experiences for d/Deaf, blind, disabled and hearing audiences.

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Chloé Saintesprit: Afro-Descendant Morphology and Dance (French language)

Contemporary dancer and activist Chloé Saintesprit explores different morphologies of Afro-descendant dancers to suggest new ways of understanding colonial pedagogy in modern dance schools.

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Theatre Alberta & the 35//50 Initiative: The Engagement Lab

The Engagement Lab is an immersive and intimate experimental “lab” designed to ask theatre-makers in Alberta how they can create a more equitable arts ecology and transform the relationship between historically marginalized artists and Alberta’s predominantly white theatre institutions.

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MTSpace: Art Exchange 2021

A unique model that could inspire other intentional creation collectives: 36 IBPOC artists from the Waterloo Region were able to foster new connections and relationships, and exchange ideas for projects, creative play and experimentation with no pressure to create a final product. An archive of some of the art works created can be found at this link.

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Organizational

Agence On est là

On est là! is a new non-profit agency for artists and artisans whose mandate is to promote diversity in francophone Canadian productions.

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Canada Council:

Deaf and Disability Arts Practices in Canada

This report offers a broad picture of Deaf artists and artists with disabilities in Canada, their artistic practices and latest innovations, and related findings concerning accessibility, equity, self-determination, and support.

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Postmarginal Montreal Retreat Harvest, 2018

The second Postmarginal event brought together more than 60 artists to reinvent the way we look at “difference” in theatrical practice and fully explore its creative potential. See the harvest wall of the collective’s contributions here.

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Postmarginal Toronto Symposium, 2017: Beyond Accents

Marjorie Chan chaired this panel focused on the various languages of the theatre, on translation, on acting with accents, on signing, and on supertitles in order to explore techniques by which linguistic differences can be used as tools for the creation of new theatrical forms. Panelists: Samreem Aziz, Cynthia Ashperger, Julia Lenardon and Shelley Liebembuk.

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Postmarginal Toronto Symposium, 2017: The Critical Difference

Chaired by Harvey Young, this panel explored how theatre critics might find inspiration from theatrical practices that emerge from diverse cultures, and how the professional practices of the Euro-American theatre tradition can limit our understandings of what ‘good theatre’ is or can be. Panelists: Ric Knowles, Carly Maga, J. Kelly Nestruck and Glenn Sumi.

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Postmarginal Toronto Symposium, 2017: Directing Across Difference

This panel, chaired by Jivesh Parasram, was concerned with “practicing difference,” exploring techniques for how directors working with actors, dramaturges, and designers can take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the presence of people of different cultures, abilities, backgrounds, training, and traditions. Panelists: Jill Carter, Karin Randoja, Guillermo Verdecchia and Soheil Parsa.

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Charter for an Accessible, Inclusive and Equitable Culture

(French language)

This charter by PRint offers an ethical compass to help cultural organizations and institutions gauge and strengthen their commitment to accessibility, inclusion and equity.

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Diversité artistique Montréal (DAM)

DAM’s mission is to provide ongoing support to professional and developing artists, primarily through one-on-one career development consultations, training and a mentoring program. Several key projects and various partnerships in the arts community create opportunities for racialized and immigrant artists who are faced with systemic barriers.

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Creative Users Project

Creative Users is a national disability arts service organization delivering online programs and services that connect and cultivate d/Deaf and disabled artists and help changemakers in the arts build more inclusive communities.

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Sync Leadership

With an international scope, Sync is a disabled-led program exploring d/Deaf and disabled leadership. Combining leadership theory with one-on-one coaching, Sync develops d/Deaf and disabled leadership in arts, culture, heritage and media.

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Naheyawin

Naheyawin works with businesses, non-profits and institutions to reinvigorate the spirit of Treaty in their organizations. Their workshops, ceremonies and custom programs use Indigenous cultures, histories and worldviews to reveal new possibilities for allyship and collaboration in a post-reconciliation era.

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Punctuate! Theatre: Virtual Indigenous Artist Hub

In collaboration with Dreamspeakers, Punctuate! offers a showcase of Indigenous artists from across Alberta, Canada, and South America. The interview series, hosted by multidisciplinary Métis performer Rebecca Sadowski, brings together nine Indigenous voices to discuss their practice.

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Prismatic Arts Festival: Voices we Need to Hear

Recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, this is an archive of conversations facilitated by Prismatic’s Artistic Director Raeesa Lalani featuring the voices of an incredible representation of Indigenous artists and artists of colour from across Canada. The series was co-presented by Atlantic Presenters Association.

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(Re)Setting the Stage: The Past, Present, and Future of Casting Practices in Canada

Conducted over two days in spring 2021, this online event by York University’s Theatre Department responded to the urgent need to address systemic racism in Canadian theatre and gathered professional theatre directors, playwrights, actors, educators, and students from across Canada.

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ArtistProducerResource

Generator’s ArtistProducerResource is a go-to resource that includes a collection of resource links to Indigenous, culturally specific, d/Deaf and disability-led arts organizations.

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Guide d’information pour les diffuseurs (French language)

Artists and organizations such as Beyond the Visual are designing new inclusive artistic forms or adapting their works to make them more accessible to specific and varied audiences. This guide, created by Laurie-Anne Langis, details specific actions and offerings that can be implemented to increase access for blind and low vision patrons.

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Humber College: Accessibility Toolkit

Created in collaboration with Tangled Art + Disability, this guide focuses on strategies to make art exhibition spaces more accessible. The guide discusses incorporating accessibility features into exhibition designs through label design and text, lighting, image description, audio description, transcription, captioning, language usage, access symbols, and more.

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LEGacy Circus: Increasing Accessibility in Movement-Based Practice

LEGacy Circus has created an online list of things studios and instructors can do to make their spaces and classes more welcoming to people with disabilities. Communication is key.

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Tangled Art + Disability: Curated Resources

This extensive collection includes links to information on access funding, accessible design in digital media, research, networks, events, relax performance toolkits, and much more.

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Postmarginal Montreal Retreat Podcast, 2018 (French language)

This podcast, created by the Magnéto Balados company, was recorded on May 15 and 16 at the Conservatoire d’art dramatique in Montreal. It offers the reflections of three Postmarginal participants: Lisa Ndejuru, Albert Kwan, and Anne-Catherine Lebeau.

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Montreal Arts Council: Accessibility Tool Kit for d/Deaf and Disabled Artists

Developed in collaboration with a consultant, this resource offers a wide range of tools and guides to share best practices in working with d/Deaf and disabled artists.

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Deaf Artists & Theatres Toolkit (DATT)

Conceived, developed and hosted by Cahoots Theatre, the Deaf Artists & Theatres Toolkit serves as a resource and guide to increase innovative collaborations between professional theatre companies and d/Deaf artists, as well as to increase engagement with d/Deaf audiences.

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Advocacy

Maada'oonidiwag Anti-Racist 'Canadian' Theatre Exchange

This private Facebook group moves the conversation beyond inclusion and diversity to hold space for theatre artists who are committed to anti-racist work in creation, performance, administrative, and audience spaces in and around the colonial project called 'Canadian theatre.'

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AD HOC Assembly: Artists Driving Holistic Organizational Change

AD HOC is an arts advocacy collective dedicated to the sustained forward movement of ethno-cultural and socially diverse performance works, processes, and traditions. This website includes equity resource packages, contract templates, a networked community, and more.

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YEG Performing Arts Accessibility Ad Hoc Group

In 2019, a group of Edmonton-based performing arts companies came together to tackle the question of how to make performances accessible to as many people as possible. This page contains the working group’s ongoing research.

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Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO)

CPAMO is a movement of Indigenous and racialized artists engaged in empowering the arts communities of Ontario. CPAMO seeks to open opportunities for Indigenous and racialized professionals and organizations to build capacity through access and working relationships with cultural institutions across Ontario.

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CultureBrew.Art (CBA)

CBA is a digital platform that promotes and fosters intersectional interculturalism throughout the performing, literary, and media arts. Its central tool is a national searchable database of Indigenous and racialized artists.

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