Core Readers

It has been a long time coming. We are seeking Core Readers to help shape our core funding proposals for 2028 to 2031.

After 12 years, we are finally eligible to apply for core funding from our federal arts council as an Arts Support Organization. We are deeply grateful for the operating support we have received from our provincial arts council and government over the past four years. Having the support of both would truly be a game changer for us.

That said, the two funding applications are not alike at all, and the funding cycles do not line up either. Preparing proposals for both is a significant effort. We will be putting much of our other work to the side in order to meet the May 27, 2026 proposal deadline. We never take public funding for the arts for granted. Our whole community is beyond grateful. Our vision, mission, and mandate are only possible because of public support. Still, the labour required can be hard to manage at times, especially when capacity and wellbeing are not quite where they need to be to do the work well and on time.

As we ease back into things, we would love to know if any of you might be interested and available to serve as Core Readers, offering feedback from a personal and community perspective before it is submitted. Our budget is tight as we recover from our first ever accumulated deficit, more on that soon, but we do have a small amount set aside for modest honoraria if that helps make participation possible.

The proposal will be up to 64,000 characters, or about 12,000 words, plus appendices, so it is no small ask. If this feels doable, please reach out to me at hello@artspond.com. We are aiming to complete a first full draft that you could read by May 8, 2026.

As a taste, here is an early attempt at our response to the first question about our context in the milieu. The word limit means a great deal is left out, and the rest of the application will try to bring those pieces to light. How does it read to you? It will likely look quite different in a few days. As a practice in our second decade, we are trying to be more open and responsive about where we truly are in the moment.

In short, this is a work in progress. Thank you for reading along, and for continuing to walk with us through the messy, hopeful middle.

CONTEXT

Describe the context in which your organization pursues its activities. (7,500 characters maximum). This can include information about: 

• the regional, historical or cultural characteristics and context for the arts community, group of artists and/or artistic practice you serve
• other information related to your choices about activities and services

PURPOSE

We are a changemaker of a different kind.

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

Our vision is to seed and sustain the conditions that enable Disabled and other justice‑deserving creatives to guide real and radical change and care beyond their usual spaces.

Our mandate is to uncover and address evolving systems of precarity and harm by shaping collective responses that balance everyday care with seismic change, supporting creatives to not just survive but thrive while growing futures of shared prosperity across Canada.

PRACTICES

We fulfill our mandate via five intersecting practices:

• Sharing stories | Shaping wisdoms
  Through collaborative storytelling, we shape and share wisdom about the things that help, hinder, and harm rooted in the lived experience of impacted groups.
• Sustaining ecosystems | Seeding platforms
  With collective impact, we sustain cooperative ecosystems that hack systems of harm and seed open-source tools and technologies that harmonize people, communities, and systems to thrive.
• Settling crises
  In an age of polycrisis, we help settle urgent personal emergencies to global threats through mutual aid and other care-centric efforts.

Taken together, we balance the tensions between change and care. We respond to crises while reshaping the conditions that give rise to them. We move at the speed urgent needs require, and at the slowness that wellbeing, trust, access, and abiding shift demand.

PONDS

We make and shape systems change and innovation across five realms of life:

• Real: Physical/analog places where creatives live and work
• Virtual: Digital/online spaces that expand connection and collaboration
• Natural: Environmental landscapes that sustain care with all living things on the planet
• Dream: Imagined/aspirational spaces that cultivate imagination and hope
• Ancestral: Wisdoms, traditions, and legacies passed across generations

PEOPLE

We guide hope and give care to people, communities, and systems with multiple justice‑deserving groups:

• Deaf and Disabled (d/Deaf, Blind, k/Crip, Mad, Neurodiverse, Sick, Spoonie, and other disabled)
• Francophone
• Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, Inuit)
• Newcomer
• New Generation (18-35 years)
• Outside the Core (Suburban, Rural, Remote, Resource deserts in the core)
• Racialized (Black, Brown, other people of colour)
• Women, Trans, Non-binary
• 2SLGBTQIA+

Traditionally, we have balanced all these groups using an intersectional approach.  In our second decade, we want to place Deaf and Disabled communities more deeply at the center of our ecology.

PRIORITIES

We amplify the promise of diverse intersections between:

• Disciplines
  We support all disciplines in the artistic, creative, and cultural industries.
• Locations
  We prioritize national dialogues while also engaging regionally, provincially, and internationally (Americas, Europe, Pacific).
• Languages
  We work in Fluent and Plain English with support for ASL, LSQ, and French as funding permits. We want to support all equally in the future, including selected Indigenous languages.
• Professions
  Our collaborators include independent creatives, collectives, small to mid-sized enterprises, education institutions, and other social purpose organizations within and outside arts and culture. We hire artists, curators, designers, educators, producers, managers, technologists, urban planners, impact investors, futurists, changemakers, caregivers, and more.

PATHS

Our journey began more than a decade ago in response to widespread precarity faced by creative gig workers and small enterprises across Canada. While financial insecurity has long been considered the main issue, we have tried to address many other factors that contribute to this vulnerability.

For example, we have sought to uncover the intersectionality of responses to such big challenges as:

• Digital threats and transformation (digital justice)
• Ableism and audism (disability justice, Deafhood, Deaf Gain)
• Poverty and pandemic recovery (economic justice)
• Racism and colonialism (social justice)
• Gentrification (spatial justice)
• Rural isolation (accessibility justice)

PAST ACTIVITIES

ArtsPond was founded in 2014 and federally incorporated as a not-for-profit in 2016.

Until 2018, we were a thought leader on national shared charitable platforms.

Since 2016, aHa! has empowered hundreds of young changemakers and caregivers in arts and culture across Canada, including workforce training and one-on-one mentorships, internships, and paid employment opportunities.

In 2017, we hosted one of Canada’s first national conversations on digital transformation at the Digital Arts Services Symposium in Ottawa and Toronto. This led to six major digital initiatives from 2018 to 2026, including: DASSAN19 (national symposium), Artse United (platform cooperative), Hatch Open (open-source software), DigitalASO (national innovation ecosystem), Access Art (access mapping of provincial public art), and Together There (national digital justice exchange).

In 2018, we launched Groundstory, Ontario’s first arts-led collective impact initiative addressing gentrification. This work sparked What Space, a youth-led international knowledge resource, and Groundtrust, an emerging cultural land trust in Ontario.

In 2019, we launched I Lost My Gig Canada to support gig workers during the pandemic. What began as a national impact survey became a mutual aid network with 7,500+ members from 40+ Ontario communities, all 13 provinces and territories Canada-wide, and two dozen countries internationally.

Since 2022, we have focused on strengthening wisdom and leadership in intersectional change, critical access, and collective care. This culminated in Wellsprings, a strategic Care Plan for our second decade until 2033. Supporting wisdom and storytelling fellowships with Deaf, Disabled, Indigenous, and Outside the Core creatives included Caring Cultures (youth-led social change and care in Greater Toronto to Hamilton Area), I Love My Gig Ontario (post-pandemic mutual aid and care Ontario-wide), and Care Fellows (national disability justice).

POSSIBILITIES

We are a leader in the ecology because we are designed to work where overlapping forms of precarity shape human life. This work is intentional and complex, and few organizations are prepared to hold it with care over the long term.

We are often seen as an Arts Support Organization (ASO), but support alone cannot meet shifting conditions. We operate as an ASO+, advancing justice through intersectional Service, Support, Social Purpose, Social Change, and Systems Innovation. This work requires operational strength, imagination, and the resolve to work differently across culture, care, access, and power with diverse partners.

This work requires long term commitments of 10 to 15 years minimum, not short program cycles of 1 to 3 years. Disability justice is a design advantage, offering lived insight into system failure, adaptation, and what supports wellbeing across real and virtual life. Core funding enables us to move with care and intention while taking thoughtful risks and guiding change amid uncertainty.

We stay relevant by embracing fluid and inclusive leadership that balances slowness with innovation. We resonate with Laloux’s Teal culture, including evolutionary purpose, self management, wholeness, and organizations as living systems. Led by multidimensional care, critical access, and collective impact, we align people and resources toward futures few dare to imagine.