1.0 Purposes
Nourish positive change and care with, by, and for creatives of all kinds.
Mission
Our mission is to nurture thriving ecosystems of care in all realms of life via the wisdom and creativity of arts and culture.
Vision
Our vision is to empower artists and other creatives from the margins to guide radical social change and real community care within and beyond their usual surroundings.
We realize our vision by equipping creatives of all kinds to overcome obstacles and crises that hamper their potential to nurture bright and caring futures in a chaotic world. By doing so, we believe we will help boost their capacity to grow springs of wellness with, by, and for us all.
Mandate
Our mandate is to strengthen prosperity and wellbeing by cultivating knowledge, ecosystems, and platforms of creative care in both human and natural life.
We work with artists, curators, educators, producers, and other creatives from across Canada and beyond to co-create meaningful responses to the complex challenges that amplify vulnerabilities in their lives, communities, and planet wide.
We seek to unpack and address the many root causes and wicked consequences of precarity. These include spatial, social, environmental, economic, digital, disability, accessibility, and other concerns. Our aim is to promote justice and support thriving and caring cultural ecosystems in solidarity with other social impact movements.
For example, in alignment with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, to date we have worked on arts and culture-led remedies and therapies to urgent issues that threaten our society. These include gentrification, digitalization, economic exploitation, pandemic disruption, regional and disciplinary disconnection, and social injustices such as racism, colonialism, and ableism. In the future, we also aim to encourage creative responses to environmental disasters, such as the climate crisis and freshwater conservation.
Seeds for change
We embrace four values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours that help creatives to guide social change. They are:
- Create: Centering values of artistic wisdom that strengthen social bonds for the public good.
- Engage: Amplifying attitudes that boost equitable access to thriving creative economies for all.
- Share: Deepening beliefs in the power of cultural reciprocity to nourish healthy communities
- Care: Sustaining behaviours that hearten creative platforms of mutual care in all realms of life.
Theory of care
We believe four steps will help cultivate vibrant cultures of care within and beyond arts and culture. They are:
- If: We hearten deep, trust-based relationships between changemakers and caregivers.
- And: Nourish cooperative efforts that strengthen justice, prosperity, and wellbeing with careseekers and caretakers from justice-deserving groups.
- Then: Thriving human communities and sustainable planetary ecosystems can evolve and grow in all realms of life.
- Where: Creatives of all kinds are valued as vital catalysts that guide and bind all living things together via radical social change and real community care.