Winter 2026
Introducing a collective vision for five steps toward a positive digital future with, by, and for equity and justice-deserving communities in Canadian arts and culture. Written in 2024 to 2025, this Manifesto builds upon ArtsPond’s DigitalASO Knowledge Framework from 2021. It also serves as a companion to So Far: Scenarios to Seed and Grow a Digital Arts Services Alliance developed in 2025 to 2026.
This is a living resource that will be updated over time with your input. Share your feedback on the Manifesto here.
This Manifesto was made possible with the support of Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Strategy Fund, Government of Canada, Ontario Arts Council, and Government of Ontario.
So, what?
What does a positive digital future in arts and culture look like to you?
This Manifesto is based on stories and suggestions gathered during community consultations across Canada. These consultations were hosted by ArtsPond as a part of DigitalASO from 2020 to 2023.
The digital ecosystem has changed rapidly since these public consultations were held. Among many others, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and concerns over the environmental impacts from digital infrastructure now shape how artists and other creative communities experience digital life.
To help bridge past insights with present realities, this Manifesto expresses some of what participants expressed about humanity, creativity, justice, and care in the face of deep and rapid digital transformation. It then applies this thinking to newer issues like AI, platform power, data extraction, and ecological impact. These statements are offered as a starting point, as seeds for further discussion with community that will be revisited and updated over time through ongoing dialogue.
Seeds
“Is technology taking us further away from humanity, or is there a possibility for technology to actually increase empathy?”
— DigitalASO Participant
Digital technology is reshaping how we live, work, connect, and care for one another. For arts and culture, this brings both extraordinary opportunities and profound risks.
A positive digital future must ensure that technology serves artistic, creative, and cultural communities, and the public good rather than profit interests alone.
Three priorities are essential to realizing this future:
- Reasserting the role of artists in society so they are not sidelined in the digital realm.
- Building up wise practices that support sustainable, imaginative, and human-centered ways of working in real and virtual life.
- Advancing a just society by ensuring digital transformation contributes to belonging, inclusion, diversity, equity, access, and care of all living things in every way.
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems and other large‑scale digital infrastructure continue to expand, these seeds help ensure that technology serves people, culture, and the planet, not the other way around.
In this spirit, we also affirm:
- Digital work must welcome multiple forms of knowing and being.
This includes 2SLGBTQIA+, Deaf, Disabled, Indigenous, Newcomer, Outside the Core, Racialized, Women-Trans-Nonbinary, Youth, and other lived ways of relating and creating. Cultural and access protocols are part of the design of all digital tools and spaces, not an afterthought. - Relationality matters.
Trust, consent, care, and cultural grounding are core requirements for digital futures rooted in justice and community. - There must be more than one way to participate.
Low-bandwidth, offline, hybrid, and local options must be normal so people facing connectivity, income, disability, or accessibility barriers can always take part in traditionally digital-first or digital-only spaces.
Steps
At the heart of a positive digital future is the conviction that artists and other creatives are essential. They are not simply producers of content, but positive creators and shapers of meaning, connection, care, and social change. Artists have always helped people and society navigate change and imagine new futures. In the digital age, their role is more vital than ever. We must ensure they have the tools, support, and agency to shape a digital world that is just, creative, and deeply human. These steps apply to AI, data‑driven tools, and other digital systems as much as to platforms and devices.
1. Digital must strengthen, not replace, authentic human connections.
“Performing to a screen full of faces in boxes is not the same as being in the same space as other humans.”
— DigitalASO Participant
While digital tools can connect artists and audiences across vast distances, they cannot fully replicate the embodied experience of live, shared moments. Technology should support, not substitute, the human relationships at the core of artistic, creative, and cultural practices. Use AI and automation in ways that remove barriers, not people. Favour tools that free time for care, dialogue, and creation. Avoid designs that isolate users or replace community touchpoints.
Always make space for rest and slowness. Center consent and trauma-informed approaches. Safety includes emotional safety, cultural safety, and access safety. Offer clear expectations, transparent processes, warm moderation, and options for quiet or asynchronous participation in all digital and virtual environments.
2. Creatives must retain agency and ownership over their work.
“It feels like sometimes that [online video] is just another extraction. It’s another extension of taking our ideas, intellectual property, and spiritual essence and putting it on camera. But at the same time, I’ve been so blessed. I’ve got to film amazing stuff that people would never see.”
— DigitalASO Participant
Digital transformation risks turning artists and other creatives into mere content providers for extractive platforms. Creatives need control over their intellectual property, fair compensation, and protection from exploitation. Require opt-in consent for any AI training on all artistic, creative, and cultural works. Use clear licenses. Track provenance so creatives can see when and how their works, persectives, or data are used.
Prioritize building community-governed infrastructure and open protocols so artistic, creative, and cultural property, stories, wisdom, knoweldge, and data are protected from misuse. Use transparent licensing and community oversight to prevent unauthorized training or derivative uses of digital property, and real property that has been digitalized into the virtual world.
3. Digital spaces must reflect and respect cultural diversity.
“Digital does not erase inequity and oppression; it simply transfers them to a different sphere of reality.”
— DigitalASO Participant
Digital tools are often built for and by dominant cultures. A positive digital future must make space with, by, and for 2SLBTQIA+, Deaf, Disabled, Indigenous, Racialized, Newcomers, Outside the Core, Women-Trans-Nonbinary, Youth, and other equity and justice-deserving groups to share stories on their own terms, in their own languages, and with their own protocols. Audit AI systems for bias with community participation. Support Indigenous data sovereignty.
Be committed to multilingual and multisensory environments. Provide language access, including support for Sign, French, Indigenous, and other non-English languages, captions, transcripts, audio description, and screen-reader-friendly design as standard practice.
4. Digital spaces and technology must be accessible and equitable.
“Canada pays way more for internet services than most of the rest of the world. There’s an equity gap. There’s a literacy gap. Sometimes there’s a technology bandwidth gap.”
— DigitalASO Participant
Digital participation is still deeply unequal. Many artists and other creative and cultural gig workers lack reliable internet, devices, or digital literacy. Equitable digital futures depend on addressing these barriers and ensuring everyone can participate fully. Offer no‑ and low‑bandwidth pathways. Pair AI features with plain‑language help and human support.
Ensure accessibility by design. Build public access points and device libraries. Use mobile mini‑labs and hybrid local‑digital spaces. Treat access as more than compliance by supporting creative captioning, access doulas, accessibility check‑ins, and human-centered co‑design with people with lived experience.
5. Creatives must be empowered to shape the evolution of digital tools, not just use them.
“A willingness to jump in and try is something I’ve noticed artists have in spades. Oftentimes, it’s interesting to parallel the idea of stepping on the stage or sitting down to a blank page and creating something out of nothing […] that feeling of fearlessness and abandon that artists can show when creating work, I hope we can get that mind shift also with technology.”
— DigitalASO Participant
Artists and other creatives bring critical perspectives and creativity that can transform how technology is designed and used. They should be co-creators in digital innovation, ensuring that new tools align with human values and artistic visions. Invite artists and other creative and cultural workers into AI design and testing. Fund artist-led prototypes that model ethical, inclusive, and climate aware uses of data and automation.
Ground innovation in reciprocity and shared stewardship. Support community accountability in governance, testing, and iteration of new digital ecosystems and platforms. Ensure low-income gig workers and small to mid-sized enterprises in arts and culture have as much say and ownership in the direction of transformative digital futures as large institutions, business leaders from private corporations, and governments.
Suggestions
“Digital technology is not the bold new way of the future. It is scary to break down our little squares that we have. We all take a risk to join in. How do we build the trust over time, and how do we create that respect and that real dare to move forward?”
— DigitalASO Participant
Beyond the five points described above, artists and cultural workers shared additional insights:
- Hybrid possibilities
Digital tools can bridge geography and reduce travel demands while respecting cultural practices. Use AI to support translation, captioning, and discovery with human review. Design hybrid formats that do not assume digital is always better. - Economic precarity
Digital work can exacerbate financial instability. Explore income supports like Universal Basic Income, member pricing that remains accessible, and provenance tracking so creators are paid when their work informs AI outputs. - Digital justice principles
Principles such as access, participation, common ownership, and healthy communities call for collective governance. Favour open, community‑governed tools. Use plain‑language consent. Give people control over how their content and data are used in AI systems. - Environmental concerns
Sustainable digital practices matter. Prefer energy‑efficient tools and hosting. Make low‑data workflows and device repair normal. Budget for reuse. - Human-centred design
Prioritize relationships and cultural relevance over technical perfection. Treat AI as assistive, not authoritative. Test with people from equity‑ and justice‑deserving groups. Measure success by reduced barriers, stronger relationships, and community wellbeing.
With today’s realities in mind, we also affirm the importance of:
- Shared digital infrastructure
Community‑owned infrastructure is essential. This includes centralized hosting, open‑source platforms, shared DevOps support, secure data spaces, long‑term maintenance, and sector‑wide discoverability tools so small groups are not left to build alone. - Care, repair, and conflict navigation
Calling‑in practices, relational repair, community weavers, and warm moderation are skilled labour and should be resourced as core parts of digital culture. - Justice-rooted evaluation
Evaluate impact through story‑based, community‑led indicators that reflect cultural resonance, reduced barriers, and wellbeing, not only narrow output metrics. - Interoperability, searchability, and findability
Shared taxonomies, open data patterns, and sector maps help people find each other, reduce duplication, and build a shared picture of the ecosystem. - Accessibility hybrid futures
Hybrid formats should center access by design. Provide multiple paths to participate for people in suburban, rural, remote, and urban resource‑desert communities. - Recognition of care labour
Language interpretation, captioning, access coordination, facilitation, and knowledge weaving are vital skills that deserve fair pay and long‑term pathways.
So, then?
These principles guide emerging digital technologies, including AI and data‑driven tools that were not yet prominent during early consultations. They also highlight the need for sustainable digital practices that recognize the environmental burdens of digital infrastructure. As technologies evolve, the community’s ongoing leadership is essential to ensure digital change strengthens human connection, cultural sovereignty, equity, and ecological care. We invite further discussion to refine these principles and ensure they remain relevant and grounded in lived experience.
We also recognize that a positive digital future depends on shared stewardship. Digital systems must be governed with communities, not only for them. This means formal roles, shared infrastructures, and long‑term care funds that maintain access, security, and cultural safety. As tools change, so must our commitments to openness, trust, equity, and environmental responsibility. We need continuous dialogue, community‑driven standards, and pathways for renewal so the sector can evolve with integrity and imagination. This Manifesto is both an anchor and an invitation. It anchors shared values and invites everyone to help shape digital futures grounded in humanity, justice, and collective flourishing.