Solitary precarity out.
Shared prosperity in.
ArtsPond is a changemaker and a caregiver of a different kind.
Our mission is to nurture thriving ecosystems of care in real, virtual, and natural life via the wisdom and creativity of arts and culture.
Our vision is to hearten worlds where creatives of all kinds are valued as positive deviants that both challenge and bind communities together in and through the promise and power of arts and culture-led systems change and mutual care across Canada and beyond.
Our approach is rooted in wise practices from social innovation and community-engaged arts, including:
a) Knowledge: Via co-creation labs and other participatory activities, we help ready the next generation to interact with complexity and co-engineer caring paradigm shifts in response to the damaging roots and ripple effects of precarity within diverse communities.
b) Ecologies: Via incubation of cooperative and mutual aid networks, we help nurture synergies of trust and connection that strengthen human solidarity, allyship, inclusion, diversity, access, equity, and belonging across cultural, economic, geographic, and other silos.
c) Platforms: Via growth of innovative business models, we develop sustainable tools and technologies that help embody reciprocal values of respect, care, and collective prosperity with, by, and for all living things on our planet.
A decade ago, we began our journey nurturing shared remedies to the systemic precarity of gig workers and small to mid-sized enterprises in the artistic, creative, and cultural industries Canada-wide.
Traditionally, precarity has been thought of primarily as an economic issue. We walk less travelled paths. We seek to tackle many other contributing factors to precarity, including spatial, social, environmental, economic, disability, and digital justice.
Concretely, this has led us to uncover stories and incubate collective responses to such intractable issues as gentrification, mass digitization, pandemic losses, income inequality, sexism, racism, ableism, and more.
In the future, we wish to seed and support arts and culture-led responses to other mega issues from the climate crisis and clean water to elder care, youth unemployment, gender-diverse entrepreneurship, socioeconomic development outside the core, Indigenous reconciliation, and more.
Overall, we strive to realize the potential of arts and culture to help further the United Nations’ Global Sustainable Development Goals, including no poverty (Goal 1), quality education (Goal 4), gender equality (Goal 5), clean water (Goal 6), decent work and economic growth (Goal 8), industry, innovation and infrastructure (Goal 9), reduced inequalities (Goal 10), sustainable cities and communities (Goal 11), climate action (Goal 13), peace, justice and strong institutions (Goal 16), partnerships (Goal 17), and more.
Cultivating a more creative and open society, we intentionally adopt collaborative practices crossing cultural, economic, geographic, political, social, and technological boundaries. We actively enable and celebrate the perspectives of diverse interdisciplinary, intergenerational, intercultural, and interability voices, including Indigenous, Black and other people of colour, D/deaf and disabled, 2SLGBTQ+, youth, women, New Canadians, and other equity-seeking groups. We do so with the assumption that the full spectrum of humanity is better together than we are apart, and community-engaged creativity is a crucial element to bolster and intertwine the best in us all.