Springs of Purpose

Found it! is an occasional blog series by ArtsPond Founder, Jessa Agilo. In this article, Jessa shares an update on the creation of our upcoming second decade strategic plan for 2024 to 2033.

Wellsprings

As the joys of spring gradually turn to the warm comforts of summer, I would like to share an update on the creation of our upcoming second decade strategic plan for 2024 to 2033.

It has been a long but rewarding journey! Our goals have begun to coalesce into a strategic guide called, Wellsprings: Make change. Give care. This title is meant to evoke the dynamic connections between social change and care that underpin all of our efforts in arts and culture.

We look forward to sharing our finalized plans for your review and feedback later this year. While subject to change, below you will find a preview with samples from our work-in-progress.

Long strategies

There are many ways to approach structuring a strategic plan.

For our all of our plans, we have intentionally chosen a longer timeframe than usual as the type of efforts we undertake are time-consuming, deeply human, and utterly life-altering.

There isn’t a recipe. Our work necessitates long-term investments (10-15+ years minimum) versus more traditional programmatic strategies (commonly 1-5 years). It depends on cross-sectoral collaborations that bypass traditional silos. It requires placing impacted people at the center and being accountable to shared visions of what thriving futures look like. It demands complex conversations outside the comfort zones of many communities. It depends on remaining open to difficult pivots in response to unanticipated disasters or seemingly implausible dreams.

All of these things inevitably gather to seed a strategic ecosystem that requires complex, long-term planning and learning.

Accessibility first

Our inaugural first decade strategic plan was a single infographic, a visual “plan on a page” without further explanation. While brief, it contained a lot of graphic and text-based information in a compact format that wasn’t very accessible to people with different needs or preferences for learning.

While we expect to share another visual “plan on a page” for our next strategy, it will have a greater focus on visual accessibility. We will also share written and visual explanations of our plans in fluent and plain English and French to supplement this visual guide, with summaries in ASL, LSQ, and selected Indigenous languages, audio, video, and other accessible formats.

We intend this plan to be a living guide which can evolve and grow over time with community input. We are also working on a knowledge base or glossary with descriptions of common and uncommon terms and concepts that underlie our work. We hope all of these efforts will make our strategic plan for 2024 to 2033 much more accessible and enjoyable for everyone to review.

Seeds for change and care

About five years ago, one of the first strategic frameworks we created as a foundation for our second decade was called, Seeds for change. While our thinking has evolved significantly since then, they have remained meaningful to us as guiding pre-conditions for arts and culture to lead positive social change. Once these seeds are met, the potential to validate and advance our Theory of care from a year ago is increased.

For example:

Seeds for change

• CREATE
  Center values of artistic wisdom that strengthen social bonds for the public good.
• ENGAGE
  Amplify attitudes that boost equitable access to thriving creative economies for all.
• SHARE
  Deepen beliefs in the power of cultural reciprocity to nourish healthy communities.
• CARE
  Sustain behaviours that hearten just platforms of mutual care in all realms of life.

Theory of care

• 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 equity-deserving groups,
• THEN
  thriving human communities and sustainable planetary ecosystems can evolve and grow in all realms of life,
• WHERE
  creatives in arts and culture are valued as vital catalysts that guide and bind all living things together via complex social change and holistic care.

Inspired sources

We have had many sources of inspiration as our plans have evolved over the past several years. One inspiration, stemming from our work on Together There, has been beehives.  The interconnected, hexagonal, fractal structures of beehives has been a call for us to strategically distill our frameworks of knowledge and communication with five core elements plus a heading or summary for the sixth.

For example, our plan in progress has the following high-level sections:

1. Plans: Summary of all aspects, i.e., a visual overview
2. Purposes: Why do we exist? i.e., mission, vision, and mandate
3. Pledges: Who are we committed to? i.e., diversity, equity, access, and inclusion
4. Priorities: What do we want to achieve? i.e., social change, impact, and care.
5. Paths: How and when will we achieve our priorities?, i.e., projects, services, and activities.
6. Ponds: Where will we have impact? i.e., spaces, places, and ecosystems.

As we dive into each section, the subsections are also similarly based around groupings of beehive-like structures. See below for a deeper discussion.

Fluent and plain purposes

For many years, I have felt that the language we have used in our public communications is difficult to understand or relate to and is not as accessible as it should or could be.

While successfully writing both inspiring and clear language is a lifelong journey, I feel we are starting to make some progress. This new plan represents a significant attempt to rethink how we tell our story to both fluent and plain language stakeholders.

The images in the slider above (try refreshing the browser if they do not display properly) feature draft mission, vision, and mandate statements for the coming decade using fluent and plain language. Words and phrases with dotted underlines will link to our knowledge base in the fluent version.

For example, the mission statement reads:

Fluent

Our mission is to nurture uncommon and thriving ecosystems of care in all realms of life via the wisdom and creativity of arts and culture.

Plain

Our mission is to help communities thrive using arts and culture.

As an example of the knowledge base, “realms of life” and “arts and culture” are defined in the fluent edition as:

• Realms of life encompass five dimensions of human and non-human existence and experience, including Real, Virtual, Natural, Dream, and Ancestral life.
• Arts and culture is an umbrella term referring to a wide array of traditions, practices, forms, and disciplines in the artistic, creative, and cultural industries. Among others, it includes the fine arts, applied design, cultural heritage, and more.

Pledges to belonging

We continue to pledge ourselves in this plan to enliven human belonging with equity-deserving groups at every turn.  Our pledges include to:

• Deepen belonging by bolstering human connections and acceptance, especially with 2SLGBTQIA+ and Women/Trans/Non-binary people. Our key impact measures include improved personal resilience and collective wellbeing.
• Strengthen inclusion by welcoming and embracing all perspectives, particularly Youth, Newcomers, Francophones, and other English as a Second Language minorities. Our key impact measures include enhanced empathy and opportunities for engagement.
• Celebrate diversity in human identities, experiences, and cultures, especially with Indigenous, Black, and other racialized people of colour. Our key impact measures include increased unity, solidarity, and healing.
• Boost equity by ensuring justice, fairness, and equality for everyone, particularly with Outside the Core and Low-income families, gig workers, and small to mid-sized enterprises in all disciplines in the artistic, creative, and cultural industries. Our key impact measures include strengthened representation and participation.
• Enable access by providing ample resources and opportunities for all, especially with d/Deaf and Disabled people. Our key impact measures include increased innovation and care.

Priorities ideation

While we are still in a process of ideation, we have highlighted five strategic priorities that feel meaningful to us at this time. Rooted in an expanded vision of care in arts and culture, they include:

• Activate access to essential services with careseekers. Our key impact measures include strengthened individual creativity and resilience.
• Grow the versatility of community support with caretakers. Our key impact measures include increased collective empowerment and engagement.
• Renew the social value and benefits of care with caregivers. Our key impact measures include deepened life worth and meaning.
• Hearten the potential for social change with caremakers. Our key impact measures include increased prosperity and care in both human and natural life.
• Illuminate wise passages to systemic justice with careshapers. Our key impact measures include expanded justice and innovation.

The two images in the slider above (try refreshing the browser if they do not display properly) provide a more detailed description of the first and second priorities. They each include: a graphic illustration called Wellsprings which outlines key terms and concepts that underpin the priority; a summary of key impact measures and connections to the United Nations’ global Sustainable Development Goals; and, more detailed signposts for tracking progress and impact.

The Wellsprings illustrations may serve as an entry point leading to the design of the overall one-page visual summary of the plan. However, when the priorities are all put together, the resulting illustration is complex to understand for the average viewer.  The final plan on a page is likely to be much simpler.  Or, I can certainly hope so!