Parallel Tracks 2021
Through an offering of workshops, conversations, and resources, Parallel Tracks 2021 is a training, knowledge-sharing, and activist initiative exploring the intersections between performing arts, digital spaces, and anti-oppressive practice.
Parallel Tracks 2021 seeks to…
Increase artists’ capacity to facilitate, online and in-person: to lead group-based arts work in ways that are emergent, supportive of diversity and healthy conflict, and conducive to safe risk-taking.
Support artists who are leading innovative, change-making, community-engaged artistic work, to continue to do online
Support arts workers who are organizing around labour rights, racial justice, and other important areas, to continue to do so online
Explore how the performing arts sector has been adapting to predominantly online work, with regard to contracting processes and related power dynamics and labour/intellectual property rights
Parallel Tracks 2021 Team:
Facilitators: Nikki Shaffeeullah, Shreya Shah, Matthew Armstead, Rachel Penny, Sonja Rainey, Karis Jones-Pard
Project Director & Producer: Nikki Shaffeeullah
Publications Editor: Sasha Tate-Howarth
Participating artist groups: Made in Exile Theatre, miyoteh performance, Moveable Beast Collective, Fat Fables, Stage management & anti-racism collective, Teardrop Collective
Parallel Tracks 2021 is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. It was conceived in part in collaboration with staff and trainers from Training for Change, and with support from Why Not Theatre and The AMY Project.
Parallel Tracks (2017)
Parallel Tracks 2017 was a free training program and community gathering for a national cohort of 12 BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) artists who were interested in building their skills in community-engaged arts.
Parallel Tracks 2017 supported participants to dream up, develop, resource, facilitate, and evaluate their own community-engaged arts project in ways that were grounded in creativity and anti-oppression. It explored different ways art can be used uplift communities, stimulate important conversations, be open to healthy conflict and mindful of power dynamics, and supportive of grassroots movements.
Highlights included:
Online workshops via Zoom leading up to the in-person gathering
The program covered travel to Toronto, accommodation, meals and a cash honorarium for all participants
Three full days of workshops exploring project design and development, fundraising, budgeting, arts-based facilitation skills, and more
Support visioning and planning their own projects to lead in their own communities
Collectively creating a short performance, using the skills we gained in order to share about the skills we gained
Attending Talking Treaties, Jumblies Theatre’s large-scale, outdoor, community-engaged theatrical spectacle based on several years of oral history and artistic research about Toronto treaty history. Participants also had a guest artist talk with Talking Treaties lead artist Ange Loft.
A meal and gathering with local community-engaged artists in Toronto
The program was conceived as an intervention into the institutionalization of “community arts” as a sector and field of practice. It was an effort to support BIPOC artists and leaders who are already cultivating work in their own communities, to continue to do so with increased training, networks, skills, knowledge of available resources, and affirmation.
Parallel Tracks 2017 Team:
Facilitators: Aliya Jamal, Kama La Mackerel, Julia Hune-Brown, Nikki Shaffeeullah
Director & Producer: Nikki Shaffeeullah
Associate Producer: Kitoko Mai
Guest Artist: Ange Loft
Culinary Artist/Caterer: kumari giles
Parallel Tracks 2017 Participants:
Lynx St. Marie, Sui-Taa-Kii, Terra Matthews, Jay Cheung, Kendi Tarachi, Skylar King, Kim Ninkru, Jessica Leung, Osani Balkaran, Kirsten Taylor, Ciel Noel, Ezra Green
Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, with additional support from Jumblies Theatre.
