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today i learned the alt weekly cover story i wrote 10+ years ago about an influential youth arts program inspired the founding of a local non-profit that is now finally breaking ground on what will be canada's first professional Black arts centre https://twitter.com/safia______/status/1326538077213401088
there's a few interesting takeaways here. local arts and culture journalism can have an impact, esp in the recovery of under-reported community histories. when i wrote that cover story, i was a 24 yo intern/community arts worker. fresh arts was this mythic youth initiative that +
loomed largely amongst artists + organizers doing that frontline work. the influential cohort that emerged from fresh arts attests to the myriad of ways artists + arts workers can become "professionalized". we should recognize + value community-based arts training/mentorship. +
but i think also worth considering in the re-telling of these histories is who is named. yes, many many artists came out of fresh arts. that remains a key legacy. but i still think a lot about the two young women who ran fresh arts: starr jacobs, verle thompson. it was not easy +
running a pioneering youth-led initiative that lacked proper infrastructure or funding beyond gov't sources. i always remember this line from verle: "it’s almost like we were so busy mentoring other people that no one was mentoring us." imagine being in your 20s, and struggling +
to keep an arts org alive during mike harris's so-called common sense revolution, which cut so many vital downtown programs and services. the insurmountable challenge of keeping it all afloat amidst the constant cycle of maintaining programs, applying for project funding, etc +
imagine the burnout, the weight of this responsibility. let's hold space for these histories too. pioneering arts administrative labour shouldn't be rendered so invisible +
and more recognition should be given to how community arts work is an unrecognized training ground for curatorial + cultural programming skills development. this is a professionalization avenue for many, many qtbipoc arts workers that is often unvalidated. let's fix this </end>
