Solitary precarity out.
Shared prosperity in.
ArtsPond is a changemaker of a different sort.
Our mission is to cultivate progressive ideas and untapped potential in the arts into exceptional, everyday shared realities for collective impact in both real and virtual communities on-the-ground and in-the-cloud.
Devoted to radical inclusivity, our mandate is to strengthen the potential of artistic expression to nurture healthy human ecosystems that cultivate equity and social cohesion by boosting spatial, economic, digital, and accessibility justice and other urgent systemic issues in under-served communities across Canada and beyond.
Purposefully, we foster cooperative actions fusing values and practices from community-engaged arts, human-centered design, and social innovation as a means to uproot intractable systemic issues from gentrification and economic inequality to critical access and the digital divide. We strive to unpack and respond to the complexity of these issues through an intersectional approach, including knowledge-building, ecosystem-building, and platform-building with and for equity-seeking groups in arts and culture.
Across diverse urban, rural, and virtual communities, our vision is to strengthen collective human engagement and belonging through the cultivation of deep, lifelong connections to the capacity of community-engaged artistic expression to sustain positive social change for all.
An evolving story, we fulfill our vision through the development of responsive interventions that illustrate the profound capacity of arts and culture to foster a more inclusive and engaged society, strengthen public appreciation and participation in community-building through the arts, and promote the creative vitality and economic prosperity of vulnerable artists and producers from all backgrounds.
Looking to 2030 and beyond, 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, people with disabilities, 2SLGBTQ+, youth, women, New Canadians, and other racialized and marginalized 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.