Creative Calgary Congress — Exploring ways that the arts and artists can play a leadership role in making Calgary a more curious, compassionate and creative place for all citizens.
The Community Activists — Cesar Cala and Teresa Woo-Paw
How do we create a more inclusive public discourse and mind frame amidst all our diversities and differences?
Reclaiming/Redefining the Mainstream
What is the mainstream? Who’s in, who’s out and who’s on the margins? How does our common sense of the ‘mainstream’ hamper us in creating a future together?
Teresa Woo-Paw is a former MLA for Calgary-Northern Hills. Born in Hong Kong, Woo-Paw graduated from U of C in 1982 with a Bachelor of Social Work and has been an active member of the Calgary-Mackay community for more than 30 years.
Cesar Cala currently works as the Manager for the Neighbourhood Strategy at United Way of Calgary and Area. Before moving to Canada in 1996, Cesar was involved in community development in the Philippines and other parts of the world for more than 15 years.
Intro
We are both long-term community organizers, social activists, disruptors of the status quo. Today we are going to explore this idea of ‘mainstream.’ Who is the mainstream? Who’s involved? Who’s in who’s out? Who’s in the margins? Does our common sense of what is the mainstream hamper us from bringing together the all the people needed to build the future we all aspire to create together? Sometimes we don’t examine how we pigeonhole people and their communities into our idea of who’s in and who’s out in our construction of our common sense. So our session will be around that question: How do we start to define and reclaim what makes the mainstream and how can we all be empowered?
Open Session #1
Let’s define ‘mainstream’ as ordinary, popular, orthodox, everyday.
Key Word Exercise
Participants were given words to place on the floor in relation to the word ‘mainstream,’ which was in the centre of the room. How close or far is each term in relation to the concept of mainstream?
Participant comments are in italics.
Close to Mainstream
Old stock Canadians
Suburb
Downtown (Juxtaposed to suburb, which someone else also considered mainstream)
Community group
Arts
Citizen
Regular Albertans
Medium Distance Away
International
Cultural
Western heritage
Alternative
Arts
Core Canadian values (So many immigrants, it takes time for a newcomer to get to know about the core values of a country)
Downtown
Chinatown (Everything feeds into mainstream depending on what group you belong to)
Thinktank
Immigrant
Ethnic
Far Away
Special interest
Eastern
Culture
Foreign (There are always debates on how welcoming Canada is, despite how open and welcoming we say we want to be)
Newcomer (Far from mainstream, for a time…)
Discussion Following the Exercise:
How much has changed, if we had done this exercise 20 years ago?
We value multiculturalism yet this group still feels that it’s outside the mainstream at this point.
If an individual person is voting or being vocal at a town hall meeting, their personal perspective is accepted and that vocalizing action is considered a mainstream activity, yet when citizens group themselves together, they become a ‘special interest’ group outside the mainstream fighting for rights they feel are missing.
Mainstream both empowers/includes and disempowers/excludes.
Mainstream doesn’t need to be seen only as a negative concept. Can old thinking and old structures be changed so that mainstream is more welcoming? And seen as an okay place to be?
Teenagers feel they must rebel against the mainstream, and anti-establishment is common for younger generations. Every generation feels an equivalent to that. How do we empower youth?
If we were to make a statement of change… “everybody must…” what would that look like? What are our values? What if we agreed to feel tolerance and understanding and empathy for whatever is impacting others?
Those with power and control make the decisions on how mainstream resources are allocated.
Often those in the margins are not part of decision-making; how do we make space for them, along with empathy and acceptance? We need all work together to create opportunities for meaningful participation.
There was an assumption that some of today’s conversation would be focused on how to diversify the audience base. Please think about how to invite diverse communities and be welcoming with your arts activities.
We can’t have the hard conversations until we learn to listen to each other and understand each other.
Open Session #2
Repeated the Key Word Exercise where participants were given words to place on the floor in relation to the word ‘mainstream,’ which was in the centre of the room. How close or far is each term in relation to the concept of mainstream?
Close to Mainstream
Regular Albertans
Creative
Suburb (Consumers)
Special interest (What drives the trends of the mainstream: money; money comes from special interest groups)
International
Culture (This is how we identify ourselves whether the mainstream realizes it or not)
Medium Distance Away
New development
Western Heritage
Chinatown
Arts
Downtown
Community group (A vehicle to get closer to mainstream?)
Old stock Canadian (This ‘value’ is falling off the mainstream)
Thinktank
Far Away
Multicultural (Calgary is a new city lacking an understanding of multicultural)
Alternative (Word used to make mainstream more palatable to individualists)
Core Canadian values (Misnomer?)
Eastern
Immigrant (Not sure where they’re connected into YYC)
Ethnic (Somewhat in hiding in our city)
Newcomer
Discussion Following the Exercise:
It’s alarming about what’s on the periphery in this exercise: Is that how we see our community? Even with such diversity in the room?
Did we place words according to the current reality? Curious why we didn’t place the words to reflect where we want society to go.
How do we redefine mainstream? How do we break patterns?
Young people in the Asian Heritage Foundation want to see themselves as part of the mainstream.
More diversity on Boards of Directors would be good. But is there a universal cultural understanding of volunteering? How you serve your community is different in different cultural groups. For example, membership in a community association may cost money and not all individuals want to spend money to join, but then the association isn’t representative. Consideration: Perhaps a particular group, such as the Somali Association, for example, could be the members of the community association rather than individual Somali Canadians.
Individual groups want to be understood and want to integrate. For example, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra’s ImaginAsian concert attracted audience members from the Asian community. There was a strong emotional reaction — they felt like they belonged and enjoyed hearing their country of origin’s music played there. The challenge is how to sustain the engagement and how institutions like the CPO change because of this engagement.
Employment First initiative — helps with disability employment.
Where does public education fit into the mainstream and how does it bring these pieces together? Use education as a fulcrum to engage groups differently.
Other literary cultures, such as magical realism of Latin America or haiku, could play a greater role in the curriculum. This could be an opportunity to teach understanding early.
The City of Calgary’s new Culture Plan aims to “maximize the diversity advantage of Calgary.” How do we do this in the arts? Can we help Calgarians (new and old) see their lives reflected in the city’s art and culture?
Art on stage is something I value. How welcoming is the complete experience?
Statistics show that an ethnic show brings participants in once — for example Kim’s Convenience or Kite Runner — but they don’t necessarily come back a second time. How do we keep that engagement? One-time events don’t create engagement. Can you continue diverse programming? Programming is a starting point to look at diversity in the whole organization. We need to increase the comfort zone of the whole experience instead of smashing somebody into our molds.
Approach youth for their contributions and mentor them (such as on a board).
Price point matters; last-minute cheap tickets are appealing — it’s lower risk.
Perhaps we need to build a movement — people can get behind social movements and create their own steps. They may be small steps, but maybe a few “strange giant leaps” will have great impact (e.g. Stampede signage all in Mandarin).
Physical accessibility — communicate the different forms of assistance that are available.
The Art of Relevance by Nina Simon has suggestions on how to make your institution relevant.
Cesar has a signage idea for making public buildings more welcoming: Whatever door you enter, you’re in the right place.
Cesar’s Comments at the End of the Day
My one big ‘aha moment’ today — don’t use the term ‘mainstream’ among a group of artists! It has a lot of different meanings. Teresa and I work with a lot of marginalized communities and they want to be considered part of the mainstream — but not artists — they think mainstream is boring. Otherwise it was a great conversation.
A few thoughts:
- Maximize the diversity of language — we need to look at diversity as not a deficit, but diversity as an asset. How do we maximize that and utilize it for the benefit of everyone? Someone said, diversity is a fact, inclusion is the benefit.
- Expand the cultural comfort zone — we have our own different comfort zones, we need to start sharing them and continuously experience each other’s space so our cultural comfort zones continue to expand and overlap.
- Deepen ongoing engagement — one-offs don’t solve anything. We need to deepen ongoing engagement. Diversity is about breaking barriers but also transformation.
- Look at diversity around all forms such as cultural, abilities, disabilities, and socio economic status and so on.
- We need to explore other forms of organizations that will be inclusive of various experiences of community.
I want to end with this — as we’re talking about our concept of mainstream, each one of us has our own spheres of influence. Each one of us has our own physical and social spaces. What if we make the commitment to make these spaces be more inclusive and more welcoming so that at the end of the day, for all Calgarians, no matter what door we enter, we’ll be in the right place.
Cesar Cala
Cesar currently works as the Manager for the Neighbourhood Strategy at United Way of Calgary and Area.
Before moving to Canada in 1996, Cesar was involved in community development in the Philippines and other parts of the world on issues of human rights, democratic reform, people’s participation, grassroots development and social innovation.
In Canada, he pursued his interest in community development, both in volunteer and professional capacities, with organizations like Oxfam-Canada, the Developmental Disabilities Resource Centre of Calgary, the Ethno Cultural Council of Calgary, the Children’s Legal and Educational Resource Centre, Calgary.
He has been involved in local initiatives like Calgary Vital Signs, grassroots grantmaking, cross-cultural dialogue and community organizing. His current work involves supporting citizens lead community change and facilitating collaborative initiatives of residents, social agencies, funders and other partners.
Cesar occasionally lectures at the University of Calgary on community development and social justice.
Teresa Woo-Paw
Teresa Woo-Paw is a former MLA for Calgary-Northern Hills. Born in Hong Kong, Woo-Paw graduated from U of C in 1982 with a Bachelor of Social Work and has been an active member of the Calgary-Mackay community for more than 30 years.
Prior to politics, Woo-Paw was employed as a private consultant providing diversity training, and program facilitation.
She has worked for the Calgary Health Region, Cultural Diversity Institute, United Way, the Red Cross, CBE, the Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association and the Calgary Immigrant Aid Society.
She has also founded and/or served with many organizations such as CCVO, Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre, Alberta Wild Rose Foundation, Society for Cultural and Multicultural Programs, Calgary Chinese Community Service Assoc, Southern Alberta Asian Heritage Foundation, and the Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary. Her active community involvement has earned her many prestigious awards including the Alberta Centennial Commemorative Award, the Queen’s Jubilee Award for Multiculturalism and Community Services, the YWCA’s Women of Distinction Award, the Immigrant of Distinction Award, and Canada 125th Commemorative Award for Community Services.
About the Creative Calgary Congress
Calgary Arts Development produced the first Arts Champions Congress in 2011 as a meeting place for people who make Calgary’s arts sector a vibrant and exciting place to work and our city a great place to live.
Renamed the Creative Calgary Congress in 2014, it returned on November 22, 2016 as a place to share ideas and explore ways that the arts and artists can play a leadership role in making Calgary a more curious, compassionate and creative place for all citizens.
